Alexander Pope Quotes

552 Sourced Quotes

The character of covetousness, is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence.

Alexander Pope
There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.

Alexander Pope
Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd.

Alexander Pope
Our plenteous streams a various race supply, The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd, The yellow carp, in scales bedropp'd with gold, Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains, And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains.

Alexander Pope
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

Alexander Pope
The light of Heaven restore; Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.

Alexander Pope
Whether the darken'd room to muse invite, Or whiten'd wall provoke the skew'r to write; In durance, exile, Bedlam, or the Mint, Like Lee or Budgel I will rhyme and print.

Alexander Pope
Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.

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

Alexander Pope
The good must merit God's peculiar care; But who but God can tell us who they are?

Alexander Pope
A tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation-robes.

Alexander Pope
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.

Alexander Pope
The time shall come, when, free as seas or wind, Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind, Whole nations enter with each swelling tide, And seas but join the regions they divide; Earth's distant ends our glory shall behold, And the new world launch forth to seek the old.

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

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

Alexander Pope
Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain, These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd Make and maintain the balance of the mind.

Alexander Pope
In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend.

Alexander Pope
For when success a lover's toil attends,Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends

Alexander Pope
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
He, who through vast immensity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compose one universe, Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle other suns, What varied Being peoples every star, May tell why Heaven has made us as we are...

Alexander Pope
Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person; they make friendships as kings of old made leagues, who sacrificed some poor animal betwixt them, and commenced strict allies; so the ladies, after they have pulled some character to pieces, are from henceforth inviolable friends.

Alexander Pope
Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.

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