Top 100 Alexander Pope Quotes
#1. As some to church repair, not for the doctrine, but the music there.
Alexander Pope
#2. While I live, no rich or noble knave shall walk the world in credit to his grave.
Alexander Pope
#3. What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things, ...
Alexander Pope
#6. Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.
Alexander Pope
#7. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Alexander Pope
#10. Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
Alexander Pope
#11. One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.
Alexander Pope
#12. See! From the brake the whirring pheasant springs,
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings;
Short is his joy! He feels the fiery wound,
Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.
Alexander Pope
#15. Judge not of actions by their mere effect; Dive to the center, and the cause detect. Great deeds from meanest springs may take their course, And smallest virtues from a mighty source.
Alexander Pope
#17. No more the mounting larks, while Daphne sings, Shall, list'ning, in mid-air suspend their wings.
Alexander Pope
#18. Averse alike to flatter, or offend;
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.
Alexander Pope
#19. The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer.
Alexander Pope
#20. Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.
Alexander Pope
#21. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.
Alexander Pope
#22. In this commonplace world every one is said to be romantic who either admires a fine thing or does one.
Alexander Pope
#23. O happiness! our being's end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name:
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die.
Alexander Pope
#24. For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
Alexander Pope
#25. Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
Alexander Pope
#26. 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.
Alexander Pope
#27. A wise physician, skill'd our wounds to heal, is more than armies to the public weal.
Alexander Pope
#28. 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.
Alexander Pope
#29. An atheist is but a mad, ridiculous derider of piety, but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion; he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action.
Alexander Pope
#30. 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.
Alexander Pope
#32. Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,
With whom my muse began, with who shall end.
Alexander Pope
#33. Z - ds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil! Plague on't!'t is past a jest - nay prithee, pox! Give her the hair" - he spoke, and rapp'd his box.
Alexander Pope
#34. Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labor when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
Alexander Pope
#35. How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?
Alexander Pope
#37. Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamtrous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare They fall, and leave their little lives in air.
Alexander Pope
#38. Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I'll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!
Alexander Pope
#39. Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.
Alexander Pope
#40. And you, my Critics! in the chequer'd shade,
Admire new light thro' holes yourselves have made.
Alexander Pope
#41. Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charm'd the small-pox, or chased old age away;
Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce,
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?
Alexander Pope
#42. But see, Orion sheds unwholesome dews; Arise, the pines a noxious shade diffuse; Sharp Boreas blows, and nature feels decay, Time conquers all, and we must time obey.
Alexander Pope
#43. Sure of their qualities and demanding praise, more go to ruined fortunes than are raised.
Alexander Pope
#44. Live like yourself, was soon my lady's word, And lo! two puddings smok'd upon the board.
Alexander Pope
#45. Some who grow dull religious straight commence
And gain in morals what they lose in sense.
Alexander Pope
#46. Persons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature.
Alexander Pope
#47. There still remains to mortify a wit The many-headed monster of the pit.
Alexander Pope
#48. Envy will merit as its shade pursue, But like a shadow, proves the substance true.
Alexander Pope
#50. Taste, that eternal wanderer, which flies
From head to ears, and now from ears to eyes.
Alexander Pope
#51. Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
Alexander Pope
#52. Interspersed in lawn and opening glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each others' shades.
Alexander Pope
#53. Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
Alexander Pope
#54. The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life.
Alexander Pope
#55. Old politicians chew on wisdom past,
And totter on in business to the last.
Alexander Pope
#56. We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives them to.
[Thoughts on Various Subjects, 1727]
Alexander Pope
#57. Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.
Alexander Pope
#58. Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score.
Alexander Pope
#59. Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.
Alexander Pope
#61. Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.
Alexander Pope
#62. Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing.
Alexander Pope
#63. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, 'Tis for mine
For me kind nature wakes her genial power,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower.
Alexander Pope
#64. By flatterers besieged And so obliging that he ne'er obliged.
Alexander Pope
#65. How loved, how honored once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot A heap of dust alone remains of thee 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Alexander Pope
#66. Good God! how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.
Alexander Pope
#67. I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
Alexander Pope
#68. And each blasphemer quite escape the rod, Because the insult's not on man, but God?
Alexander Pope
#69. There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.
Alexander Pope
#72. We ought, in humanity, no more to despise a man for the misfortunes of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he cannot help; were this thoroughly considered we should no more laugh at a man for having his brains cracked than for having his head broke.
Alexander Pope
#74. Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.
Alexander Pope
#76. Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?
Alexander Pope
#77. Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly, When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky; Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves, When thro' the clouds he drives the trembling doves.
Alexander Pope
#79. Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
Alexander Pope
#80. Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain, These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd Make and maintain the balance of the mind.
Alexander Pope
#81. In vain sedate reflections we would make
When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.
Alexander Pope
#82. And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.
Alexander Pope
#83. Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis true the hardest science to forget.
Alexander Pope
#84. Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies.
Alexander Pope
#85. For he lives twice who can at once employ,
The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.
Alexander Pope
#86. What is it to be wise?
'Tis but to know how little can be known,
To see all others' faults, and feel our own.
Alexander Pope
#87. What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
Alexander Pope
#89. Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
Alexander Pope
#90. To err is human; to forgive divine.
Alexander Pope"
Excerpt From: Moriarty, Liane. "The Husband's Secret.
Alexander Pope
#92. Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.
Alexander Pope
#94. For who can move when fair Belinda fails? Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain, 5 While Anna begg'd and Dido rag'd in vain. Then grave Clarissa graceful wav'd her fan; Silence ensu'd, and thus the nymph began.
Alexander Pope
#95. Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare; And beauty draws us with a single hair.
Alexander Pope
#96. Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
Alexander Pope
#97. Who sees pale Mammom pine amidst his store, Sees but a backward steward for the poor.
Alexander Pope
#98. A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
Alexander Pope
#99. For thee I dim these eye and stuff this head With all such reading as was never read.
Alexander Pope
#100. Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn, And liquid amber drop from every thorn.
Alexander Pope
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