Alexander Pope - Nature Quotes

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Good-nature and good-sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine.

Alexander Pope
Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

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

Alexander Pope
See plastic Nature working to this end, The single atoms each to other tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Form'd and impell'd its neighbor to embrace.

Alexander Pope
Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state, Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.

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
All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers; hushed are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers.

Alexander Pope
I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures.

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
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
Nature made every fop to plague his brother, Just as one beauty mortifies another.

Alexander Pope
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.

Alexander Pope
The learn'd is happy nature to explore,
The fool is happy that he knows no more.

Alexander Pope
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

Alexander Pope
Thus God and nature linked the gen'ral frame,
And bade self-love and social be the same.

Alexander Pope
From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

Alexander Pope
Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but it impairs what it would improve.

Alexander Pope
Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer books are the toys of age! Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before;
Till tir'd he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.

Alexander Pope
But see, Orion sheds unwholesome dews; Arise, the pines a noxious shade diffuse; Sharp Boreas blows, and nature feels decay, Time conquers all, and we must time obey.

Alexander Pope
First follow NATURE, and your Judgement frame
By her just Standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright.
One clear, unchanged and universal light.

Alexander Pope
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body, Nature is, and God the soul.

Alexander Pope
And binding Nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.

Alexander Pope
The Physician, by the study and inspection of urine and ordure, approves himself in the science; and in like sort should our author accustom and exercise his imagination upon the dregs of nature.

Alexander Pope
Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the Manners living as they rise.
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Alexander Pope
I believe it is no wrong Observation, that Persons of Genius, and those who are most capable of Art, are always fond of Nature, as such are chiefly sensible, that all Art consists in the Imitation and Study of Nature. On the contrary, People of the common Level of Understanding are principally delighted with the Little Niceties and Fantastical Operations of Art, and constantly think that finest which is least Natural.

Alexander Pope
True wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

Alexander Pope
Know, Nature's children all divide her care, The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear.

Alexander Pope
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way; Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heav'n.

Alexander Pope
Some are bewilder'd in the maze of schools,
And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.

Alexander Pope
Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law.

Alexander Pope