Top 100 Alexander Pope's Quotes
#1. Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, tuned the English tongue.
Harold Bloom
#3. No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n, Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n; But such plain roofs as Piety could raise, And only vocal with the Maker's praise.
Alexander Pope
#4. Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove? Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings? Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
Alexander Pope
#5. Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate,
Born where Heav'n influence scarce can penetrate.
In life's low vale, the soil the virtues like,
They please as beauties, here as wonders strike.
Alexander Pope
#6. 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.
Alexander Pope
#7. From the moment one sets up for an author, one must be treated as ceremoniously, that is as unfaithfully, as a king's favorite or a king.
Alexander Pope
#9. And each blasphemer quite escape the rod, Because the insult's not on man, but God?
Alexander Pope
#10. What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy,
Is virtue's prize.
Alexander Pope
#11. Know, Nature's children all divide her care; The fur that warms a monarch, warmed a bear. While man exclaims, "See all things for my use!" "See man for mine!" replies a pampered goose: And just as short of reason he must fall, Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.
Alexander Pope
#13. Then say not man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;. Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought.
Alexander Pope
#14. The people's voice is odd, It is, and it is not, the voice of God.
Alexander Pope
#15. Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
Alexander Pope
#18. What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.
Alexander Pope
#19. Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.
Alexander Pope
#20. All other goods by Fortune's hands are given; A wife is the peculiar gift of heaven.
Alexander Pope
#21. Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
Alexander Pope
#22. But why insult the poor, affront the great?'
A knave's a knave, to me, in every state.
Alexander Pope
#23. The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man's own eyes when they look upon his own person.
Alexander Pope
#25. Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heaven.
Alexander Pope
#26. For I, who hold sage Homer's rule the best, Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.
Alexander Pope
#27. In faith and hope the world will disagree, but all mankind's concern is charity.
Alexander Pope
#29. The time shall come, when, free as seas or wind, Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind, Whole nations enter with each swelling tide, And seas but join the regions they divide; Earth's distant ends our glory shall behold, And the new world launch forth to seek the old.
Alexander Pope
#30. Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet to run amok and tilt at all I meet.
Alexander Pope
#31. Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
Alexander Pope
#32. Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare; And beauty draws us with a single hair.
Alexander Pope
#33. The flower's are gone when the Fruits appear to ripen.
Alexander Pope
#34. Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid, Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid.
Alexander Pope
#35. The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.
Alexander Pope
#36. Is there a parson much bemused in beer, a maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, a clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross, who pens a stanza when he should engross?
Alexander Pope
#37. Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust.
Alexander Pope
#38. O let us still the secret joy partake,
To follow virtue even for virtue's sake.
Alexander Pope
#39. To err is human; to forgive divine.
Alexander Pope"
Excerpt From: Moriarty, Liane. "The Husband's Secret.
Alexander Pope
#40. Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgement, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is PRIDE, the never-failing vice of fools.
Alexander Pope
#41. If it be the chief point of friendship to comply with a friend's notions and inclinations he possesses this is an eminent degree; he lies down when I sit, and walks when I walk, which is more that many good friends can pretend to do.
Alexander Pope
#42. Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man.
Alexander Pope
#43. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, is the cause of Man's error and misery.
Alexander Pope
#44. Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glittering thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;
Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Alexander Pope
#45. The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth's itself a lie.
Alexander Pope
#46. Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.
Alexander Pope
#47. 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
#48. Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's severest rage disarm. Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please;
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
Alexander Pope
#49. I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
Alexander Pope
#50. Do you find yourself making excuses when you do not perform? Shed the excuses and face reality. Excuses are the loser's way out. They will mar your credibility and stunt your personal growth.
Alexander Pope
#51. You beat your Pate, and fancy Wit will come: Knock as you please, there's no body at home.
Alexander Pope
#52. Celia
Celia, we know, is sixty-five,
Yet Celia's face is seventeen;
Thus winter in her breast must live,
While summer in her face is seen.
How cruel Celia's fate, who hence
Our heart's devotion cannot try;
Too pretty for our reverence,
Too ancient for our gallantry!
Alexander Pope
#53. Trade it may help, society extend,
But lures the Pirate, ant corrupts the friend:
It raises armies in a nation's aid,
But bribes a senate, and the land's betray'd.
Alexander Pope
#54. Out with it, Dunciad: let the secret pass -
That secret to each fool - that he's an ass.
The truth once told (and whereby should we lie?),
The queen of Midas slept, and so may I.
You think this cruel? Take it for a rule,
No creature smarts so little as a fool.
Alexander Pope
#55. Great oaks grow from little acorns. He has a green thumb. He has green fingers. He's sowing his wild oats. Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand, And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand.
Alexander Pope
#56. The good must merit God's peculiar care; But who but God can tell us who they are?
Alexander Pope
#57. To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake.
Alexander Pope
#58. Who know but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind.
Alexander Pope
#59. Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.
Alexander Pope
#60. Where London's column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies.
Alexander Pope
#61. Virtue may choose the high or low degree,
'Tis just alike to virtue, and to me;
Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king,
She's still the same belov'd, contented thing.
Alexander Pope
#62. How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd
Alexander Pope
#63. True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.
Alexander Pope
#64. From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
Alexander Pope
#66. Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense,
Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence.
But Health consists with Temperance alone,
And Peace, oh Virtue! Peace is all thy own.
Alexander Pope
#67. In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend.
Alexander Pope
#68. Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed.
Alexander Pope
#69. For when success a lover's toil attends,
Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends
Alexander Pope
#70. By music minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.
...
Warriors she fires with animated sounds.
Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds.
Alexander Pope
#71. Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide,
First strip off all her equipage of Pride,
Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress,
Or Learning's Luxury or idleness,
Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain
Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.
Alexander Pope
#72. The difference is as great between The optics seeing as the objects seen. All manners take a tincture from our own; Or come discolor'd through out passions shown; Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.
Alexander Pope
#73. Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.
Alexander Pope
#74. Cursed be the verse, how well so e'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe.
Alexander Pope
#75. That character in conversation which commonly passes for agreeable is made up of civility and falsehood.
Alexander Pope
#76. A pear-tree planted nigh:
'Twas charg'd with fruit that made a goodly show,
And hung with dangling pears was every bough.
Alexander Pope
#77. Never elated while one man's oppress'd;
Never dejected while another's blessed.
Alexander Pope
#78. Where's the man who counsel can bestow, still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know.
Alexander Pope
#79. For God's sake, madam, when you write to me, talk of yourself; there is nothing I so much desire to hear of; talk a great deal of yourself, that she who I always thought talked best may speak upon the best subject.
Alexander Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Michael Kelahan
#80. Live like yourself, was soon my lady's word, And lo! two puddings smok'd upon the board.
Alexander Pope
#81. 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
#82. 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.
Alexander Pope
#83. Heaven forming each on other to depend, A master, or a servant, or a friend, Bids each on other for assistance call, Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
Alexander Pope
#84. Giving advice is many times only the privilege of saying a foolish thing one's self, under the pretense of hindering another from doing one.
Alexander Pope
#85. Order is Heaven's first law; and this confessed, some are, and must be, greater than the rest, more rich, more wise; but who infers from hence that such are happier, shocks all common sense. Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; bliss is the same in subject or in king.
Alexander Pope
#86. But see how oft ambition's aims are cross'd, and chiefs contend 'til all the prize is lost!
Alexander Pope
#87. 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.
Alexander Pope
#88. 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
#89. Silence! coeval with eternity! thou wert ere Nature's self began to be; thine was the sway ere heaven was formed on earth, ere fruitful thought conceived creation's birth.
Alexander Pope
#90. Horses (thou say'st) and asses men may try,
And ring suspected vessels ere they buy;
But wives, a random choice, untried they take;
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake;
Then, nor till then, the veil's removed away,
And all the woman glares in open day.
Alexander Pope
#91. Oh let me live my own! and die so too!
("To live and die is all I have to do:")
Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,
And see what friends, and read what books I please.
Alexander Pope
#92. And hence one master-passion in the breast, Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.
Alexander Pope
#93. 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
#94. On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.
Alexander Pope
#95. Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
Alexander Pope
#97. Where beams of imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
Alexander Pope
#98. For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
Alexander Pope
#99. 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
#100. In adamantine chains shall Death be bound, And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
Alexander Pope
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