Alexander Pope Quotes

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

Most authors steal their works, or buy.

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

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies? Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.

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

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

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

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

And little eagles wave their wings in gold.

Astrologers that future fates foreshow.

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

Of darkness visible so much be lent, as half to show, half veil, the deep intent.

Who are next to knaves? Those that converse with them.

Is not absence death to those who love?

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.

Offend her, and she knows not to forgive; Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live.

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.

So upright Quakers please both man and God.

And not a vanity is given in vain.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

Good-nature and good-sense must ever join; To err is human, to forgive, divine.

And seem to walk on wings, and tread in air.

The laughers are a majority.

Education forms the common mind.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

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.

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

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.

See the wild Waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own sad Sepulchre appears, With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very Tombs now vanish'd like their dead!

We may see the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them to.

As some to Church repair, not for the doctrine, but the music there.

The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.

Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.

To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise.

Nothing is more certain than much of the force; as well as grace, of arguments or instructions depends their conciseness.

But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain. The wond'ring forests soon should dance again; The moving mountains hear the powerful call. And headlong streams hand listening in their fall!

Fondly we think we honor merit then, when we but praise ourselves in other men.

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

In this commonplace world every one is said to be romantic who either admires a fine thing or does one.

To endeavor to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.

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

Woman's at best a contradiction still.

What so tedious as a twice-told tale?

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

Never find fault with the absent.

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

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.

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.

In adamantine chains shall Death be bound, And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.