Alexander Pope Quotes

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.

A long, exact, and serious comedy; In every scene some moral let it teach, And, if it can, at once both please and preach.

Consult the genius of the place, that paints as you plant, and as you work.

A good-natured man has the whole world to be happy out of.

To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, who never mentions hell to ears polite.

Find, if you can, in what you cannot change. Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.

I was not born for courts and great affairs, but I pay my debts, believe and say my prayers.

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.

There still remains to mortify a wit The many-headed monster of the pit.

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.

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

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words,-health, peace, and competence.

The young disease, that must subdue at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.

In lazy apathy let stoics boast, their virtue fixed, 'tis fixed as in a frost.

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 brave man struggling in the storms of fate, And greatly falling with a falling state.

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.

Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call; She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all .

Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.

Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd and make the learned smile.

Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

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.

The hog that ploughs not, not obeys thy call, Lives on the labours of this lord of all.

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!

The approach of night The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deck'd the glade, And the low sun had lengthen'd ev'ry shade.

Nor in the critic let the man be lost.

The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life.

To dazzle let the vain design, To raise the thought and touch the heart, be thine!

What riches give us let us then inquire: Meat, fire, and clothes. What more? Meat, clothes, and fire. Is this too little?

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.

I have more zeal than wit.

The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Of all affliction taught a lover yet, 'Tis true the hardest science to forget.

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.

Live like yourself, was soon my lady's word, And lo! two puddings smok'd upon the board.

The doubtful beam long nods from side to side.

Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy.

At length corruption, like a general flood (So long by watchful ministers withstood), Shall deluge all; and avarice, creeping on, Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun.

Of fight or fly, This choice is left ye, to resist or die.

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

On wings of wind came flying all abroad.

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.

While I live, no rich or noble knave shall walk the world in credit to his grave.

Wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.

For I, who hold sage Homer's rule the best, Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.

The villain's censure is extorted praise.