While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.
Alexander PopeWise 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.
Alexander PopeTo wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each Seene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.
Alexander PopePretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.
Alexander PopeOh! be thou blest with all that Heaven can send, Long health, long youth, long pleasure-and a friend.
Alexander PopeContent if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view, The learn'd reflect on what before they knew.
Alexander PopeA wise physician, skill'd our wounds to heal, is more than armies to the public weal.
Alexander PopeHere hills and vales, the woodland and the plain Here earth and water seem to strive again, Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised, But, as the world, harmoniously confused: Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree.
Alexander PopeTrue ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
Alexander PopeGreat oaks grow from little acorns. He has a green thumb. He has green fingers. He's sowing his wild oats. Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand, And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand.
Alexander PopeBehold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
Alexander PopeThere is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men; that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.
Alexander PopeJudge not of actions by their mere effect; Dive to the center, and the cause detect. Great deeds from meanest springs may take their course, And smallest virtues from a mighty source.
Alexander PopeHow shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?
Alexander PopeHow loved, how honored once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot A heap of dust alone remains of thee 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Alexander PopeSuch as are still observing upon others are like those who are always abroad at other men's houses, reforming everything there while their own runs to ruin.
Alexander PopeThe 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 PopePresumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find,Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less!Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are madeTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade?Or ask of yonder argent fields above,Why Jove's Satellites are less than Jove?
Alexander PopeSome judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Alexander PopeWhere London's column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies.
Alexander PopeNo, make me mistress to the man I love; If there be yet another name more free More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!
Alexander PopeAll looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. [and therefore the solution is to fix the jaundiced eye.]
Alexander PopeThen, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Alexander PopeWho shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?
Alexander Pope