Alexander Pope Quotes

552 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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
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
No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n, Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n; But such plain roofs as Piety could raise, And only vocal with the Maker's praise.

Alexander Pope
It is very natural for a young friend and a young lover to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them.

Alexander Pope
Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.

Alexander Pope
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense.

Alexander Pope
Of little use, the man you may suppose,
Who says in verse what others say in prose;
Yet let me show a poet's of some weight,
And (though no soldier) useful to the state,
What will a child learn sooner than a song?
What better teach a foreigner the tongue?
What's long or short, each accent where to place
And speak in public with some sort of grace?

Alexander Pope
For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.

Alexander Pope
By the streams that ever flow, By the fragrant winds that blow O'er the Elysian flow'rs; By those happy souls who dwell In yellow mead of asphodel.

Alexander Pope
Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven.

Alexander Pope
The grave unites; where e'en the great find rest, And blended lie th' oppressor and th' oppressed!

Alexander Pope
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.

Alexander Pope
Be niggards of advice on no pretense; For the worst avarice is that of sense.

Alexander Pope
The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom of playing the fool.

Alexander Pope
Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.

Alexander Pope
And each blasphemer quite escape the rod, Because the insult's not on man, but God?

Alexander Pope
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;
And when in act they cease, in prospect rise.

Alexander Pope
Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.

Alexander Pope
Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,
Happy to catch me, just at dinner-time.

Alexander Pope
Modest plainness sets off sprightly wit,
For works may have more with than does 'em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Alexander Pope
To the Elysian shades dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.

Alexander Pope
A king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough; a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn.

Alexander Pope
What Conscience dictates to be done, Or warns me not to do; This teach me more than Hell to shun, That more than Heav'n pursue.

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

Alexander Pope