Data di nascita: 24. Settembre 1717
Data di morte: 2. Marzo 1797
Horace Walpole, 4º Conte di Orford , è stato uno scrittore inglese, autore de Il castello di Otranto, primo romanzo gotico propriamente detto, e attivo in diversi ambiti e con vari interessi. Famoso fu il suo vasto epistolario con cui intratteneva dotte disquisizioni sui più disparati argomenti.
— Horace Walpole
citato in The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, pag. 132
— Horace Walpole
Context: ... When I first came abroad, every thing struck me, and I wrote its history; but now I am grown so used to be surprised, that I don't perceive any flutter in myself when I meet with any novelties; curiosity and astonishment wear off, and the next thing is, to fancy that other people know as much of places as one's self; or, at least, one does not remember that they do not. It appears to me as odd to write to you of St. Peter's, as it would do to you to write of Westminster-abbey. Besides, as one looks at churches, &c. with a book of travels in one's hand, and sees every thing particularised there, it would appear transcribing, to write upon the same subjects.
Letter to Richard West, from Rome, 16 April 1740 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t5p84vt55;view=1up;seq=194, p. 42, The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. P. Cunningham, vol. 1
— Horace Walpole
Letter to Anne, Countess of Ossory, (16 August 1776)
A favourite saying of Walpole's, it is repeated in other of his letters, and might be derived from a similar statement attributed to Jean de La Bruyère, though unsourced: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think". An earlier form occurs in another published letter:
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.
Letter to Sir Horace Mann (31 December 1769)
— Horace Walpole
As quoted in The Christian Leader, Vol. 37, Issue 7 (17 February 1934)
— Horace Walpole
On Scotland, in a etter to Sir Horace Mann (1778); comparable to "It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding", by Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir, vol. i. p. 15.
— Horace Walpole
On the death of his friend John Chute (1776)
As quoted in The National Trust Magazine, Spring 2011, p. 09
— Horace Walpole
Letter to John Chute, from Houghton, 20 Aug. 1743 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t5p84vt55;view=1up;seq=425, p. 265, The Letter of Horace Walpole, ed. P. Cunnighham, vol. 1
— Horace Walpole
Memoirs from the Declaration of the War with Spain (1746)
— Horace Walpole
Notes of 1758, published in Memoires of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second (1822), p. 226; also published as "Memoirs of the Year 1758" in Memoirs of King George II, Vol. III (1985), p. 10<!-- Yale University Press -->
— Horace Walpole
Letter to Sir Horace Mann (7 September 1743)
— Horace Walpole
Letter to Sir Horace Mann (1742)
