Alexander Pope Quotes
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.
Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep, Who lost my heart while I preserv'd my sheep.
The search of our future being is but a needless, anxious, and haste to be knowing, sooner than we can, what, without all this solicitude, we shall know a little later.
A brave man thinks no one his superior who does him an injury, for he has it then in his power to make himself superior to the other by forgiving it.
When two people compliment each other with the choice of anything, each of them generally gets that which he likes least.
I was not born for courts and great affairs, but I pay my debts, believe and say my prayers.
But honest instinct comes a volunteer; Sure never to o'er-shoot, but just to hit, While still too wide or short in human wit.
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.
Find, if you can, in what you cannot change. Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.
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.
In adamantine chains shall Death be bound, And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
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.
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes: the glorious fault of angels and of gods.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
But see how oft ambition's aims are cross'd, and chiefs contend 'til all the prize is lost!
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.
The character of covetousness, is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence.
The scripture in times of disputes is like an open town in times of war, which serves in differently the occasions of both parties.
'Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.
True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd, Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
I as little fear that God will damn a man that has charity, as I hope that the priests can save one who has not.
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.
A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows.
A long, exact, and serious comedy; In every scene some moral let it teach, And, if it can, at once both please and preach.
Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.
