Horace Walpole

When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!

By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform - They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.

The best philosophy is to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot; bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it.

Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.

I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel - a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.