Alexander Pope Quotes

552 Sourced Quotes

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

Alexander Pope
By mutual confidence, and mutual aid, Great deeds are done, and great discoveries made...

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope
Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will, And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.

Alexander Pope
A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practice it.

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

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these.

Alexander Pope
Thus when we view some well-proportion'd dome. No single parts unequally surprise, All comes united to th' admiring eyes.

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

Alexander Pope
Others import yet nobler arts from France, Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.

Alexander Pope
Though triumphs were to generals only due, crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.

Alexander Pope
Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charm'd the small-pox, or chas'd old age away;
....
To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint,
Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.

Alexander Pope
A spring there is, whose silver waters show Clear as a glass the shining sands below: A flowering lotos spreads its arms above, Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove.

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope
So man, who here seems principal alone, Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope
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.

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

Alexander Pope
Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies.

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope