Alexander Pope Quotes

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

To err is human, to forgive, divine.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

A little Learning is a dangerous Thing.

A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.

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

What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest. The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Act well your part; there all the honour lies.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

If you want to know what God thinks about money just look at the people He gives it to.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please, With too much spirit to be e'er at ease, With too much quickness ever to be taught, With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.

Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound, Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.

You purchase pain with all that joy can give and die of nothing but a rage to live.

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

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Our judgments, like our watches, none go just alike, yet each believes his own

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

Death, only death, can break the lasting chain; And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown propos'd as things forgot.

Great wits are to madness near allied And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

If I am right, Thy grace impart Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, O, teach my heart To find that better way!

All Nature is but art, unknown to thee All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her; but mainly a woman hates a man for being her friend.

Capturing the beauty of the conversion of the water into wine, the poet Alexander Pope said, "The conscious water saw its Master and blushed." That sublime description could be reworked to explain each one of these miracles. Was it any different in principle for a broken body to mend at the command of its Maker? Was it far-fetched for the Creator of the universe, who fashioned matter out of nothing, to multiply bread for the crowd? Was it not within the power of the One who called all the molecules into existence to interlock them that they might bear His footsteps?

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

All gardening is landscape painting,' said Alexander Pope.

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

And die of nothing but a rage to live

All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good. And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, 'Whatever is, is right.

Music resembles poetry, in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master hand alone can reach.

I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

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.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

An honest man's the noblest work of God

To err is human

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie;for an excuse is a lie guarded

True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd; Something whose truth convinced at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind. As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.

This long disease, my life.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool. But you yourself may prove to show it, Every fool is not a poet.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd; Labour and rest, that equal periods keep; Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep.

Order is heaven's first law.

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things,...

Whatever is, is right.

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: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much; Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides, Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, Correct old time, and regulate the sun; Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere, To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; Or tread the mazy round his followers trod, And quitting sense call imitating God; As Eastern priests in giddy circles run, And turn their heads to imitate the sun. Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule— Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!

Brevity is the soul of wit.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

All forms that perish other forms supply, (By turns we catch the vital breath and die) Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return.

chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd.

Know thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment, too?

The world forgetting by the world forgot.

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all.

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be, In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend; And if the means be just, the conduct true, Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.

The Wit of Cheats, the Courage of a Whore, Are what ten thousand envy and adore: All, all look up, with reverential Awe, At crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the Law: While Truth, Worth, Wisdom, daily they decry-` 'Nothing is sacred now but Villainy' - Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I

Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd; Mary: How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

True wit is nature to advantage dressed; What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd, Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd. Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise, Where mixed with Gods, his lov'd idea lies: O write it not, my hand - the name appears Already written - wash it out, my tears! In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays, Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeyes.

Averse alike to flatter, or offend; Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

For forms of Government let fools contest. Whate'er is best administered is best.

Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God afraid of me.

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

No place so scared from such frops is barred Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Churchyard Na fly to alter there they'll talk you dead For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.

Some who grow dull religious straight commence And gain in morals what they lose in sense.

For he lives twice who can at once employ, The present well, and e’en the past enjoy.

Remembrance and reflection how allied! What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide!

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

The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712) -Vital spark of heav'nly flame! Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Stanza 1.

Feminine psychology is admittedly odd, sir. The poet Pope..." "Never mind about the poet Pope, Jeeves." "No, sir." "There are times when one wants to hear all about the poet Pope and times when one doesn't." "Very true, sir.

Men, some to business take, some to pleasure take; but every woman is at heart a rake

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.

Then most our trouble still when most admired, And still the more we give, the more required; Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease, Sure some to vex, but never all to please.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

How vain are all these Glories, all our Pains, Unless good Sense preserve what Beauty gains: That Men may say, when we the Front-box grace, Behold the first in Virtue, as in Face!

One science only will one genius fit/ So vast is art, so narrow human wit

Montaigne speaks of “an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it.” The first is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their ABC’s, cannot read at all. The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.

Consult the genius of the place in all; That tells the waters or to rise, or fall; Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale, Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades, Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines; Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.

Let Sporus tremble — "What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk? Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?" Yet let me flap this Bug with gilded wings, This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings; Whose Buzz the Witty and the Fair annoys, Yet Wit ne'er tastes, and Beauty ne'er enjoys,

Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense Weigh thy Opinion against Providence; Call Imperfection what thou fancy'st such, Say, here he gives too little, there too much; Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,(9) Yet cry, If Man's unhappy, God's unjust; If Man alone ingross not Heav'n's high care, Alone made perfect here, immortal there: Snatch from his hand the balance(10) and the rod, Re-judge his justice, be the GOD of GOD!

So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try, Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky; Th'eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last: But those attain'd, we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthen'd way; Th'increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes, Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

Solitude Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire; Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter fire. Blest, who can unconcern’dly find Hours, days, and years, slide soft away In health of body, peace of mind, Quiet by day. Sound sleep by night; study and ease Together mix’d, sweet recreation, And innocence, which most does please With meditation. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound, Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found. False Eloquence, like the Prismatic Glass, Its gawdy Colours spreads on ev’ry place; The Face of Nature was no more Survey, All glares alike, without Distinction gay: But true Expression, like th’ unchanging Sun, Clears, and improves whate’er it shines upon, It gilds all Objects, but it alters none.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd; Labour and rest, that equal periods keep; "Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;" Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n, Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n. Grace shines around her with serenest beams, And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams. For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms, And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes, For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring, For her white virgins hymeneals sing, To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away, And melts in visions of eternal day.

The Quiet Life Happy the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. Whose herd with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire; Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter, fire. Blest, who can unconcern’dly find Hours, days, and years, slide soft away In health of body; peace of mind; Quiet by day; Sound sleep by night; study and ease Together mix’d; sweet recreation, And innocence, which most does please With meditation. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow: Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound! The pow'r of music all our hearts allow, And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.