To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know and 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, whatever it is; and despise affectation.

Walpole’s sentence commends a practical, situational ethics over system-building “philosophy.” Wisdom, for him, lies in responding sensibly to immediate circumstances (“according to the moment”) rather than performing virtue as a pose. The counsel to “do one’s duties” and “take the world as it comes” frames life as a mixture of obligation and contingency; the proper stance is neither grandiose self-assertion nor despair, but a respectful acceptance of one’s “lot,” tempered by gratitude for whatever happiness accompanies it. The closing injunction—“despise affectation”—targets the social vice Walpole most distrusted: artificiality, pretension, and moral posturing. The overall effect is a worldly, Enlightenment-inflected stoicism: modest, anti-theatrical, and grounded in conduct.