Alexander Pope Quotes

552 Sourced Quotes

Ladies, like variegated tulips, show
'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe.

Alexander Pope
Who pants for glory, finds but short repose; A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows.

Alexander Pope
Let Joy or Ease, let Affluence or Content, And the gay Conscience of a life well spent, Calm ev'ry thought, inspirit ev'ry grace, Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face.

Alexander Pope
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale; Nor God alone in the still calm we find, He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.

Alexander Pope
Know then, unnumber'd Spirits round thee fly, The light Militia of the lower sky.

Alexander Pope
Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alexander Pope
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.

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

Alexander Pope