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Alexander Pope Quotes



Quotes by Alexander Pope - (87 quotes)

Alexander Pope - From the Aging category:

Some old men continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Belief category:

It is with our judgments as with our watches: no two go just alike, yet each believes his own. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Books category:

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read / With loads of learned lumber in his head. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Change category:

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Character category:

Pride is the never-failing vice of fools. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Character category:

If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Contentment category:

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Criticism category:

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then / Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Criticism category:

Never find fault with the absent. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Criticism category:

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Critics category:

Nor in the critic let the man be lost. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Critics category:

Some praise at morning what they blame at night, / But always think the last opinion right. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Curiosity category:

One who is too wise an observer of the business of others, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Destiny category:

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state? (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Doubt category:

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise! (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Dreams category:

Men dream of courtship, but in wedlock wake. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Drunkenness category:

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. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Education category:

Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Education category:

The learned is happy, nature to explore / The fool is happy, that he knows no more. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Expectation category:

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Fashion category:

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. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Friendship category:

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Gender category:

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

Alexander Pope - From the Gender category:

Woman's at best a contradiction still. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Generosity category:

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Genius category:

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Grace category:

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Greatness category:

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Happiness category:

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? / The world forgetting, by the world forgot. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Happiness category:

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

Alexander Pope - From the Harmony category:

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Health category:

Health consists with temperance alone. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Health category:

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Health category:

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me? (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Hope category:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Hope category:

Hope neither travels through, nor quits us when we die. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Humanity category:

The proper study of Mankind is Man. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Humour category:

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Humour category:

Gentle dullness ever loves a joke. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Journey category:

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Knowledge category:

A little learning is a dangerous thing. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Knowledge category:

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

Alexander Pope - From the Life category:

And die of nothing but a rage to live. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Memory category:

Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Memory category:

Remembrance and reflection how allied! / What thin partitions sense from thought divide! (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Mistakes category:

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 to-day than he was yesterday. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Mistakes category:

To err is human; to forgive, divine. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Morality category:

The difference is too nice / Where ends the virtue or begins the vice. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Muse category:

The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Mysteries category:

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

Alexander Pope - From the Nature category:

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

Alexander Pope - From the Observation category:

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Optimism category:

The most positive men are the most credulous. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Order category:

Order is heaven's first law. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Painting category:

Whether the charmer sinner it or saint it, if folly grow romantic, I must paint it. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Passion category:

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail / Reason the card, but passion the gale. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Passion category:

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Perfection category:

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, / Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Performance category:

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part, there all the honour lies. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Poetry category:

Sir, I admit your gen'ral rule, / That every poet is a fool; / But you yourself may serve to show it, / That every fool is not a poet. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Politics category:

For Forms of Government let fools contest / whatever is best administered is best. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Politics category:

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Profession category:

Every professional was once an amateur. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Prosperity category:

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Questions category:

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence? (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Religion category:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; / The proper study of mankind is man. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Religion category:

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Religion category:

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light! (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Seeing category:

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man's own eyes when they look upon his own person. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Sight category:

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Simplicity category:

There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Style category:

Such laboured nothings in so strange a style, / Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Success category:

Pride is the never-failing vice of fools. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Taste category:

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Teaching category:

Let such teach others who themselves excel. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Teaching category:

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Thought category:

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise! (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Trust category:

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know / Make use of every friend and every foe. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Truth category:

Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Truth category:

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Truth category:

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Unknowns category:

All nature is but art unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Wisdom category:

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Wisdom category:

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Words category:

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound / Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Words category:

At ev'ry word a reputation dies. (Alexander Pope)

Alexander Pope - From the Writing category:

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. (Alexander Pope)