Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797) was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors, and for his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. Along with the book, his literary reputation rests on his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. He was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, and cousin of the 1st Viscount Nelson.
Read more about Horace Walpole: Early Life: 1717–1739, Grand Tour: 1739–1741, Early Parliamentary Career: 1741–1754, Strawberry Hill, Later Parliamentary Career: 1754–1768, Later Life: 1768–1788, Last Years: 1788–1797, Writings, Formal Styles From Birth To Death
Famous quotes by horace walpole:
“Eighteen convicts being hanged in one day ... a woman was crying an account of their execution. A gentleman asked her why she said nineteen, when there had been but eighteen hanged? She replied, ‘Sir, I did not know you had been reprieved.’”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)