Alexander Pope - Man Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

View all Alexander Pope Quotes
'Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed' was the ninth beatitude.

Alexander Pope
We ought, in humanity, no more to despise a man for the misfortunes of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he cannot help; were this thoroughly considered we should no more laugh at a man for having his brains cracked than for having his head broke.

Alexander Pope
Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgement, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is PRIDE, the never-failing vice of fools.

Alexander Pope
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; The rest is all but leather or prunella.

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
Say first, of God above or man below,
What can we reason but from what we know?

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

Alexander Pope
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die, Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

Alexander Pope
To buy books as some do who make no use of them, only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because they were made by some famous tailor.

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
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man.

Alexander Pope
Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; the strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.

Alexander Pope
The stoic husband was the glorious thing.
The man had courage, was a sage, 'tis true,
And lov'd his country.

Alexander Pope
Never was it given to mortal man - To lie so boldly as we women can.

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
But those who cannot write, and those who can,
All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.

Alexander Pope
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?

Alexander Pope
I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.

Alexander Pope
A brave man thinks no one his superior who does him an injury, for he has it then in his power to make himself superior to the other by forgiving it.

Alexander Pope
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly.

Alexander Pope
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
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he!

Alexander Pope
Praise is like ambergris; a little whiff of it, and by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to your nose, it is a stink, and strikes you down.

Alexander Pope
Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.

Alexander Pope
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.

Alexander Pope
Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd, Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd.

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

Alexander Pope
Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
In wit, a man; simplicity, a child;
With native humour temp'ring virtuous rage,
Formed to delight at once and lash the age.

Alexander Pope
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great.

Alexander Pope
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Alexander Pope