Alexander Pope Quotes

552 Sourced Quotes

For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered is best.

Alexander Pope
How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Alexander Pope
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th'offender, yet detest th'offence?

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

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

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

Alexander Pope
And you, my Critics! in the chequer'd shade,
Admire new light thro' holes yourselves have made.

Alexander Pope
The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy--their own self-love.

Alexander Pope
Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find,Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less!Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are madeTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade?Or ask of yonder argent fields above,Why Jove's Satellites are less than Jove?

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

Alexander Pope
The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole Can never be a mouse of any soul.

Alexander Pope
What then remains, but well our power to use,
And keep good-humor still whate'er we lose?
And trust me, dear, good-humor can prevail,
When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.

Alexander Pope
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
The finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the easiest.

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope
It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.

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

Alexander Pope
There is nothing wanting to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.

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

Alexander Pope
But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure and a small estate.

Alexander Pope
Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night, To blot out Order, and extinguish Light.

Alexander Pope
Still when the lust of tyrant power succeeds, some Athens perishes, or some Tully bleeds.

Alexander Pope
Nature made every fop to plague his brother, Just as one beauty mortifies another.

Alexander Pope
In various talk th' instructive hours they past, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; At every word a reputation dies.

Alexander Pope
He knows to live who keeps the middle state, and neither leans on this side nor on that.

Alexander Pope
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end:
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.

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

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

Alexander Pope
But touch me, and no minister so sore.
Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme,
Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,
And the sad burthen of some merry song.

Alexander Pope