Alexander Pope Quotes

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.

Our plenteous streams a various race supply, The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd, The yellow carp, in scales bedropp'd with gold, Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains, And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains.

Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart. One self-approving hour whole years outweighs Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas; And more true joy Marcellus exil'd feels Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels. In parts superior what advantage lies? Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise? 'T is but to know how little can be known; To see all others' faults, and feel our own.

I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.

The flower's are gone when the Fruits appear to ripen.

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

But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state.

Though triumphs were to generals only due, crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.

At present we can only reason of the divine justice from what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes, we may have truer and nobler ideas of it; but while we are in this life, we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.

Luxurious lobster-nights, farewell, For sober, studious days!

Who dies in youth and vigour, dies the best.

Never find fault with the absent.

"With ev'ry pleasing, ev'ry prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?"-She wants a heart.

A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows.

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

Ah! why, ye Gods, should two and two make four?

Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.

'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all.

Genius creates, and taste preserves.

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.

A fly, a grape-stone, or a hair can kill.

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

Coffee which makes the politician wise, and see through all things with his half-shut eyes.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

Consult the Genius of the Place in all.

Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of expiring victims or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there.

Religion blushing, veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.

Find, if you can, in what you cannot change. Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.

Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.

I was not born for courts and great affairs, but I pay my debts, believe and say my prayers.

Nor Fame I slight, nor her favors call.

Who builds a church to God and not to fame, Will never mark the marble with his name.

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

With too much quickness ever to be taught; With too much thinking to have common thought.

There is nothing wanting to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.

Drink is the feast of reason and the flow of soul.

Is not absence death to those who love?

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamtrous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare They fall, and leave their little lives in air.

Nothing is more certain than much of the force; as well as grace, of arguments or instructions depends their conciseness.

Rogues in rags are kept in countenance by rogues in ruffles.

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.

Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.

Only music has the ability to take you to the edge of reality and allow you to peek in for a moment.

All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye that habitually compares everything to something better. But by changing that habit to comparing everything to something worse, even making it a game, that person can find gratitude, relief and happiness where-ever they go and whatever they experience, guaranteed!

He who serves his brother best gets nearer God than all the rest.