Alexander Pope Quotes (535 Quotes)

Not to admire, is all the art I know To make men happy, and to keep them so.

Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.

Mean tho' I am, not wholly so,
Since quicken'd by thy breath;
O lead me whereso'er I go,
Thro' this day's life or death!

Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.

What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.

Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield.

Dim and remote the joys of saints I see;
Nor envy them, that heav'n I lose for thee.

Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Thy place is here, sad sister, come away!

Has she no faults then (Envy says), Sir Yes she has one, I must aver When all the world conspires to praise her, The woman's deaf and does not hear.

There St John mingles with my friendly bowl; The feast of reason and the flow of soul.

Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.

But when to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill.

What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?

Fame can never make us lie down contentedly on a deathbed.

Good God how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.

'Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

What can ennoble sots or slaves or cowards Alas not all the blood of all the Howards.

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many wiles.

Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring out.

As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine but the music there.

It is with our judgments as with our watches no two go just alike, yet each believes his own.

One simile, that solitary shines; In a dry desert of a thousand lines.

Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain, And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.

Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation, And taught more pleasant methods of salvation.

The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not Wife, To help me through this long disease, my life.

Ah ne'er so dire a Thirst of Glory boast,
Nor in the Critick let the Man be lost!

In Prospects, thus, some Objects please our Eyes,
Which out of Nature's common Order rise,
The shapeless Rock, or hanging Precipice.

The Critick else proceeds without Remorse,
Seizes your Fame, and puts his Laws in force.

A Wit's a feather, and a Chief a rod An honest Man's the noblest work of God.

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

Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

O happiness our being's end and aim Good, pleasure, ease, content whate'er thy name That something still which prompts the eternal sigh, For which we bear to live, or dare to die.

Woman's at best a contradiction still.

Sure of their qualities and demanding praise, more go to ruined fortunes than are raised.

Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel.

Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love.

There stern religion quench'd th' unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, love and fame.

If I dislike it, Furies, death and rage!

So perish all who do the like again.

Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die, Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man A mighty maze but not without a plan.

And what is Fame the Meanest have their Day, The Greatest can but blaze, and pass away.

True disputants are like true sportsman their whole delight is in the pursuit.

Is there a parson, much bemused in beer, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk foredoomed his father's soul to cross; Who pens a stanza, when he should engross.

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.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!