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(no category)
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Scarce any Tale was sooner heard than told;And all who told it, added something new,And all who heard it, made Enlargements too,In evry Ear it spread, on evry Tongue it grew.
-Alexander Pope
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See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
-Alexander Pope
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Absence
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Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer.
-Alexander Pope
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Action(s)
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Fix'd like a plan on his peculiar spot, to draw nutrition, propagate, and rot.
-Alexander Pope
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Admiration
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Fools admire, but men of sense approve.
-Alexander Pope
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Age
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Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
you played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill:
walk sober off; before a sprightlier age comes tittering on,
and shoves you from the stage:
leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,
whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.
-Alexander Pope
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Ambition
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Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
-Alexander Pope
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America
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We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-Alexander Pope
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Apathy
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In lazy apathy let stoics boast
Their virtue fix
-Alexander Pope, Essay on Man. Epistle ii. Line 101.
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Argument & Debate
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True disputants are like true sportsman: their whole delight is in the pursuit.
-Alexander Pope
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When much dispute has past, we find our tenets just the same as last.
-Alexander Pope
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Art
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The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
-Alexander Pope
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Attitude
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Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed.
-Alexander Pope
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Authors & Writing
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Most authors steal their works, or buy.
-Alexander Pope
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Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.
-Alexander Pope
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Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents , or my own?
-Alexander Pope
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True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
-Alexander Pope
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Beauty
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Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
-Alexander Pope
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Belief
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Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.
-Alexander Pope
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Change
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In Words, as Fashions, the same Rule will hold;
Alike Fantastick, if too New, or Old;
Be not the first by whom the New are try
-Alexander Pope, Essay On Criticism
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Be not the first by which a new thing is tried, or the last to lay the old aside.
-Alexander Pope
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Chaos
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Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored; dies before thy uncreating word: thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; and universal darkness buries all.
-Alexander Pope
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Character
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Honor and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
-Alexander Pope
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Chastity
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How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
-Alexander Pope
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Children
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Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
-Alexander Pope
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Class
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I am his Highness dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
-Alexander Pope
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Credit
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Blest paper-credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
-Alexander Pope
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Criticism
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Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.
-Alexander Pope
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Curiosity
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A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
-Alexander Pope
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Death
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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.
-Alexander Pope
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Education
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Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
-Alexander Pope
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Evil
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Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.
-Alexander Pope
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Exaggeration
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Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
-Alexander Pope
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Excuses
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An excuse is worse than a lie, for an excuse is a lie, guarded.
-Alexander Pope
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Eyes
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Why has not man a microscopic eye? For the plain reason man is not a fly.
-Alexander Pope
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Faith
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I was not born for courts and great affairs, but I pay my debts, believe and say my prayers.
-Alexander Pope
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Fame
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What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.
-Alexander Pope
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Fanaticism
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The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.
-Alexander Pope
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Father
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We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.
-Alexander Pope
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Fools, Foolishness
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Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.
-Alexander Pope
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Forgiveness
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How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?
-Alexander Pope
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To err is human; to forgive, divine.
-Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism"
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Generosity
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Many people are capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
-Alexander Pope
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Gossip
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And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.
-Alexander Pope
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Government
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For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.
-Alexander Pope
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Happiness
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Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.
-Alexander Pope
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Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.
-Alexander Pope
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Hate
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To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
-Alexander Pope
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Health
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Health consists with temperance alone.
-Alexander Pope
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Honesty
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An honest man's the noblest work of God.
-Alexander Pope
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Honor
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Act well your part; there all honor lies.
-Alexander Pope
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Humanity
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If, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great.
-Alexander Pope
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Humility
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No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.
-Alexander Pope
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Humor
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True wit is nature to advantage dressed, what oft was thought, but never so well expressed.
-Alexander Pope
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Wit is the lowest form of humor.
-Alexander Pope, "Essay on Criticism"
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Identity
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Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
-Alexander Pope
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Inheritance
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Die and endow a college or a cat.
-Alexander Pope
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But thousands die without or this or that, die, and endow a college, or a cat: To some, indeed, Heaven grants the happier fate, Tenrich a bastard, or a son they hate.
-Alexander Pope
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Insanity
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For virtue's self may too much zeal be had; the worst of madmen is a saint run mad.
-Alexander Pope
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Inspirational
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You beat your Pate, and fancy Wit will come: Knock as you please, there's no body at home.
-Alexander Pope
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Judging, Judgment
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It is with our judgments as with our watches: no two go just alike, yet each believes his own.
-Alexander Pope
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Justice
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The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
-Alexander Pope
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Law
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Curse on all laws, but those that love has made.
-Alexander Pope
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Learning
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A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain; And drinking largely sobers us again.
-Alexander Pope
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A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
-Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, lines 215-218
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Literary
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Hither the heroes and nymphs resort,
To taste awhile the pleasures of a court;
In various talk th' instuctive hours they past,
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;
One speaks the glory of the British Queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen
A third interprets motions, looks and eyes;
At every word a reputation dies.
-Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
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Loyalty
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Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
-Alexander Pope
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Mankind, Man
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Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great.
-Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
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Manners
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True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.
-Alexander Pope
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Marriage
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They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
-Alexander Pope
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Memory
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Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.
-Alexander Pope
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Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!
-Alexander Pope
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Men
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Men dream of courtship, but in wedlock wake.
-Alexander Pope
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Let sinful bachelors their woes deplore; full well they merit all they feel, and more: unaw by precepts, human or divine, like birds and beasts, promiscuously they join.
-Alexander Pope
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Mercy
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Teach me to feel another's woe. To hide the fault I see: That the mercy I show to others; that mercy also show to me.
-Alexander Pope
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Mistakes
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A man should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
-Alexander Pope
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Morals
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From pride, from pride, our very reas
Poetical Works Alexander Pope. Herbert Davis, ed. (1978; repr. 1990) Oxford University Press.
-Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (Fr. Epistle I)
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Motivational
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Two purposes in human nature rule. Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain.
-Alexander Pope
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Nature
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All nature is but art unknown to thee.
-Alexander Pope
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Observation
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One who is too wise an observer of the business of others, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
-Alexander Pope
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Opinion
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An obstinate person does not hold opinions; they hold them.
-Alexander Pope
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Order
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Order is Heaven's first law; and this confessed, some are, and must be, greater than the rest, more rich, more wise; but who infers from hence that such are happier, shocks all common sense. Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; bliss is the same in subject or in king.
-Alexander Pope
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Passion
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The ruling passion, be it what it will, The ruling passion conquers reason still.
-Alexander Pope
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Passions are the gales of life.
-Alexander Pope
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Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.
-Alexander Pope
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Perception
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All seems infected that the infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.
-Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
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Politics
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I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
-Alexander Pope
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Praise
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Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.
-Alexander Pope
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Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.
-Alexander Pope
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Pride
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At every trifle take offense, that always shows great pride or little sense.
-Alexander Pope
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Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.
-Alexander Pope
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Sure of their qualities and demanding praise, more go to ruined fortunes than are raised.
-Alexander Pope
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Profanity, Swearing, Vulgarity
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To endeavor to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.
-Alexander Pope
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Progress
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Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.
-Alexander Pope
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Reading
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The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always list'ning to himself appears.
All books he reads, and all he reads assails.
-Alexander Pope
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Reason
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On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.
-Alexander Pope
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Revenge
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On wrongs swift vengeance waits.
-Alexander Pope
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Satire
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Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend.
-Alexander Pope, Prologue to Satires
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Science
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One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.
-Alexander Pope
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Sex
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There goes a saying, and 'twas shrewdly said, Old fish at table, but young flesh in bed.
-Alexander Pope
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Strangers
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By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned; By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned.
-Alexander Pope
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Thanksgiving
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Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
-Alexander Pope
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Tyranny
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Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause.
-Alexander Pope
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Virtue
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Virtuous and vicious everyone must be; few in extremes, but all in degree.
-Alexander Pope
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Wealth
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But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.
-Alexander Pope
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Women
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Most women have no characters at all.
-Alexander Pope
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Worth
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Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.
-Alexander Pope
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Youth
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Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.
-Alexander Pope
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Books by and about Alexander Pope
