Alexander Pope quotes:

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  • No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

  • Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

  • All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

  • Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

  • Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

  • Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

  • The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

  • Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.

  • And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

  • In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

  • Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

  • The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.

  • 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!

  • What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

  • Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

  • Order is heaven's first law.

  • Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

  • A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

  • The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

  • A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

  • For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

  • Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.

  • 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.

  • One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

  • An honest man's the noblest work of God.

  • Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

  • Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

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

  • Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

  • Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

  • Passions are the gales of life.

  • The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man's own eyes when they look upon his own person.

  • A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

  • Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

  • Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

  • If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

  • Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

  • The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

  • Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

  • Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul."

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

  • Fools admire, but men of sense approve.

  • Say first, of god above or man below; what can we reason but from what we know.

  • 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.

  • Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow: Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

  • The light of Heaven restore; Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.

  • Atheists put on false courage and alacrity in the midst of their darkness and apprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing for fear.

  • Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.

  • Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, of straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.

  • Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad.

  • Sure of their qualities and demanding praise, more go to ruined fortunes than are raised.

  • Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn, Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn.

  • 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.

  • A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

  • There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.

  • Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

  • 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.

  • For critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural inclination to carrion.

  • Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.

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

  • There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead.

  • Religion blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.

  • Alas! the small discredit of a bribe Scarce hurts the lawyer, but undoes the scribe.

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

  • They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

  • 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.

  • Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.

  • To the Elysian shades dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.

  • Our plenteous streams a various race supply, The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd, The yellow carp, in scales bedropp'd with gold, Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains, And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains.

  • Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause.

  • 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!

  • In faith and hope the world will disagree, but all mankind's concern is charity.

  • Fool, 'tis in vain from wit to wit to roam: Know, sense, like charity, begins at home.

  • Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it, If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.

  • "With ev'ry pleasing, ev'ry prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?"-She wants a heart.

  • That character in conversation which commonly passes for agreeable is made up of civility and falsehood.

  • The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.

  • Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made, One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade, The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd, The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.

  • Coffee which makes the politician wise, and see through all things with his half-shut eyes.

  • 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.

  • What Tully said of war may be applied to disputing: "It should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace." But generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,--their whole delight is in the pursuit; and the disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.

  • 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.

  • True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.

  • Blest paper-credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!

  • Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.

  • Who combats bravely is not therefore brave, He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave: Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise,- His pride in reasoning, not in acting lies.

  • Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed.

  • Never elated while one man's oppress'd; Never dejected while another's blessed.

  • Wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

  • The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

  • Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

  • Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

  • All Nature is but art, unknown to thee All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good.

  • But just disease to luxury succeeds, And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds.

  • Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

  • To err is human; to forgive, divine.

  • The cabinets of the sick and the closets of the dead have been ransacked to publish private letters and divulge to all mankind the most secret sentiments of friendship.

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

  • The doubtful beam long nods from side to side.

  • 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.

  • The Physician, by the study and inspection of urine and ordure, approves himself in the science; and in like sort should our author accustom and exercise his imagination upon the dregs of nature.

  • A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

  • And little eagles wave their wings in gold.

  • 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.

  • Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.

  • Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

  • Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are fluttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go. O never fear, lads, naught's to dread, Look not to left nor right: In all the endless road you tread There's nothing but the night.

  • And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

  • The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd

  • As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Though oft the ear the open vowels tire While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

  • But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

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

  • By flatterers besieged And so obliging that he ne'er obliged.

  • Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep, Who lost my heart while I preserv'd my sheep.

  • 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 finds an altar for forbidden fires.

  • For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

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