Alexander Pope quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Alexander Pope on Wise Famous Quotes.

Get your enemy to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you.

Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.

And binding nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.

Love the offender, yet detest the offense.

From the moment one sets up for an author, one must be treated as ceremoniously, that is as unfaithfully, as a king's favorite or a king.

For what I have publish'd, I can only hope to be pardon'd; but for what I have burned, I deserve to be prais'd.

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

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate.

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

To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!

From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.

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

This long disease, my life.

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.

For he lives twice who can at once employ,
The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.

Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.

Giving advice is many times only the privilege of saying a foolish thing one's self, under the pretense of hindering another from doing one.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

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

Heaven gave to woman the peculiar grace
To spin, to weep, and cully human race.

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.

Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies.

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

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!

Then sculpture and her sister arts revived; stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live.

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will, And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.

Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I'll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!

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

The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom of playing the fool.

The season when to come, and when to go, to sing, or cease to sing, we never know.

A pear-tree planted nigh:
'Twas charg'd with fruit that made a goodly show,
And hung with dangling pears was every bough.

Oh! be thou blest with all that Heaven can send, Long health, long youth, long pleasure-and a friend.

She sins with poets through pure love of wit

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

Who dare to love their country, and be poor.

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream;

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

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

Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.

The finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the easiest.

To teach vain Wits that Science little known,
T' admire Superior Sense, and doubt their own!

Tis all in vain to keep a constant pother
About one vice and fall into another.

Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

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

But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure and a small estate.

The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong.

Art still followed where Rome's eagles flew.

Dogs, ye have had your day!

A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practice it.

Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.

The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

These riches are possess'd, but not enjoy'd!

Know thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.

Every woman is at heart a rake.

In lazy apathy let stoics boast, their virtue fixed, 'tis fixed as in a frost.

The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth.

Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these.

To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all!

Where London's column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies.

Learn of the little nautilus to sail, Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.

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

Pleas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind,And count each birthday with a grateful mind.

And little eagles wave their wings in gold.

A field of glory is a field for all.

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

I have more zeal than wit.

The good must merit God's peculiar care; But who but God can tell us who they are?

Mankind is unamendable.

Eve left Adam, to meet the Devil in private.

Be niggards of advice on no pretense; For the worst avarice is that of sense.

Education forms the common mind.

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.

Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend.

Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?

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

All this dread order break- for whom? for thee?
Vile worm!- oh madness! pride! impiety!

When much dispute has past, we find our tenets just the same as last.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine.

A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants.

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

Content if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view, The learn'd reflect on what before they knew.

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

As with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring out.

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

Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call; She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all .

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!

True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.

What will a child learn sooner than a song?

All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye.

Behold the groves that shine with silver frost, their beauty withered, and their verdure lost!

From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

To err is human, to forgive, divine.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.