Alexander Pope Quotes

552 Sourced Quotes

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

Alexander Pope
Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost?

Alexander Pope
Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice - A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.

Alexander Pope
The heart resolves this matter in a trice, "Men only feel the smart, but not the vice.

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

Alexander Pope
Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day.

Alexander Pope
When I die, I should be ashamed to leave enough to build me a monument if there were a wanting friend above ground. I would enjoy the pleasure of what I give by giving it alive and seeing another enjoy it.

Alexander Pope
Talk what you will of taste, my friend, you'll find two of a face as soon as of a mind.

Alexander Pope
The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth's itself a lie.

Alexander Pope
Our business in the field of fight, Is not to question, but to prove our might.

Alexander Pope
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!

Alexander Pope
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all!

Alexander Pope
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.

Alexander Pope
Reason, however able, cool at best, Cares not for service, or but serves when prest, Stays till we call, and then not often near.

Alexander Pope
Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade,
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.

Alexander Pope
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust.

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope
Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best.

Alexander Pope
I am satisfied to trifle away my time, rather than let it stick by me.

Alexander Pope
Far eastward cast thine eye, from whence the Sun And orient Science their brite course begun.

Alexander Pope
Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense.

Alexander Pope
I lose my patience, and I own it too,
When works are censur'd, not as bad but new;
While if our Elders break all reason's laws,
These fools demand not pardon but Applause.

Alexander Pope
To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.

Alexander Pope
Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.

Alexander Pope
Ah! why, ye Gods! Should two and two make four?

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

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

Alexander Pope
Women, as they are like riddles in being unintelligible, so generally resemble them in this, that they please us no longer once we know them.

Alexander Pope
Count all th' advantage prosperous Vice attains,
'Tis but what Virtue flies from and disdains:
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want--which is, to pass for good.

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope