Alexander Pope Quotes

Love the offender, yet detest the offense.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

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.

The cabinets of the sick and the closets of the dead have been ransacked to publish private letters and divulge to all mankind the most secret sentiments of friendship.

Our business in the field of fight, Is not to question, but to prove our might.

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

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

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

Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

The light of Heaven restore; Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more.

The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life.

Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn, Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn.

Be silent always when you doubt your sense.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

Some praise at morning what they blame at night, but always think the last opinion right.

Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score.

Some men's wit is like a dark lantern, which serves their own turn and guides them their own way, but is never known (according to the Scripture phrase) either to shine forth before men, or to glorify their Father in heaven.

An obstinate person does not hold opinions; they hold them.

Astrologers that future fates foreshow.

Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.

Mankind is unamendable.

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

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

True self-love and social are the same.

When we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old; and when we are old, we perceive it is too late to live as we proposed.

A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd.

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.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.

But if you'll prosper, mark what I advise, Whom age, and long experience render wise.

Who combats bravely is not therefore brave, He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave: Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise,- His pride in reasoning, not in acting lies.

For when success a lover's toil attends,Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends

New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise: So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try.

Most authors steal their works, or buy.

The lot of man - to suffer and to die.

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

It is very natural for a young friend and a young lover to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them.

On wrongs swift vengeance waits.

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

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.