Alexander Pope Quotes

Sleep and death, two twins of winged race,
Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace.

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O grave! where is thy victory?
O death! where is thy sting?

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place.

Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate and rot.

There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.

Search then the ruling passion: This clue, once found, unravels all the rest.

The world is a thing we must of necessity either laugh at or be angry at; if we laugh at it, they say we are proud; if we are angry at it, they say we are ill-natured.

Here thou, great Anna! Whom three realms obey, / Dost sometimes counsel take - and sometimes tea.

Where grows?
where grows it not? If vain our toil, We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.

There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men; that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.

Praise from a friend, or censure from a foe, Are lost on hearers that our merits know.

Know thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.

So perish all who do the like again.

A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.

How happy he, who free from care
The rage of courts, and noise of towns; Contented breathes his native air,
In his own grounds

To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Go wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence.

Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

Where London's column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

While pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

O Love! for Sylvia let me gain the prize,
And make my tongue victorious as her eyes.

So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part, Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.

Love the offender, yet detest the offense.

All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers; hushed are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers.

Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.

Our grandsire, Adam, ere of Eve possesst,
Alone, and e'en in Paradise unblest,
With mournful looks the blissful scenes survey'd,
And wander'd in the solitary shade.
The Maker say, took pity, and bestow'd
Woman, the last, the best reserv'd of God.

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head! Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense! See Mystery to Mathematics fly!

A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.

Pleas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind,And count each birthday with a grateful mind.

Passions are the gales of life.

Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or a quick conception and an easy delivery.

False happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

To err is human; to forgive divine.
Alexander Pope"
Excerpt From: Moriarty, Liane. "The Husband's Secret.

Some men's wit is like a dark lantern, which serves their own turn and guides them their own way, but is never known (according to the Scripture phrase) either to shine forth before men, or to glorify their Father in heaven.

Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.

True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.

I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

And empty heads console with empty sound.

The doubtful beam long nods from side to side.

O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.

Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state, Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.

I lose my patience, and I own it too,
When works are censur'd, not as bad but new;
While if our Elders break all reason's laws,
These fools demand not pardon but Applause.

With sharpen'd sight pale Antiquaries pore, Th' inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears; The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.

Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.

Oh! be thou blest with all that Heaven can send, Long health, long youth, long pleasure-and a friend.

And make each day a critic on the last.

Only music has the ability to take you to the edge of reality and allow you to peek in for a moment.

Fickle Fortune reigns, and, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains.

Consult the genius of the place, that paints as you plant, and as you work.

Such as are still observing upon others are like those who are always abroad at other men's houses, reforming everything there while their own runs to ruin.

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle
As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile

Wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense!

Woman's at best a contradiction still.

It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.

Index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.
Index-learning is a term used to mock pretenders who acquire superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes.

Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.

Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day.

How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine.

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains.
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts
Like kings, we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.

Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd, Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd.

The blest to-day is as completely so, As who began a thousand years ago.

Let sinful bachelors their woes deplore; full well they merit all they feel, and more: unaw by precepts, human or divine, like birds and beasts, promiscuously they join.

Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.

Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.

When to mischief mortals bend their will, how soon they find it instruments of ill.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!

For what I have publish'd, I can only hope to be pardon'd; but for what I have burned, I deserve to be prais'd.

But why insult the poor, affront the great?'
A knave's a knave, to me, in every state.

There is no study that is not capable of delighting us, after a little application to it.

True disputants are like true sportsmen: their whole delight is in the pursuit.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

When I die, I should be ashamed to leave enough to build me a monument if there were a wanting friend above ground. I would enjoy the pleasure of what I give by giving it alive and seeing another enjoy it.

You eat, in dreams, the custard of the day.

How vast a memory has Love!

To dazzle let the vain design, To raise the thought and touch the heart, be thine!

Still follow sense, of ev'ry art the soul, Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole.

I have more zeal than wit.

But see, the shepherds shun the noonday heat,
The lowing herds to murmuring brooks retreat,
To closer shades the panting flocks remove;
Ye gods! And is there no relief for love?

Ah! why, ye Gods, should two and two make four?

No craving void left aching in the soul.

The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life.

Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land? All fear, none aid you, and few understand.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.

Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground, And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound. Belinda still her downy pillow prest, Her guardian SYLPH prolong'd the balmy rest:

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.

Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,
Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,
And solid pudding against empty praise.
Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,
Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,
Till genial Jacob, or a warm third day,
Call forth each mass, a poem, or a play:
How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie,
How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry.

Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heaven.

Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.

A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants.

Our business in the field of fight, Is not to question, but to prove our might.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.