Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English poet Alexander Pope.
Last updated on September 7, 2024.
Alexander Pope was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translation of Homer.
Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.
What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.
Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade.
On wrongs swift vengeance waits.
Order is heaven's first law.
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.
Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.
Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?
Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause.
At ev'ry word a reputation dies.
Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.
The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man's own eyes when they look upon his own person.
No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
'Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
Fools admire, but men of sense approve.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.
The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.
Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
Gentle dullness ever loves a joke.
Woman's at best a contradiction still.
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.
The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.
Never find fault with the absent.
For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.
Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
And die of nothing but a rage to live.
One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.
There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.
The most positive men are the most credulous.
Party-spirit at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
Health consists with temperance alone.
The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.
Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed.