Alexander Pope
213 quotes
Biography
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 An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–1717), The Dunciad (1728–1743), and for his translations of Homer.
"Wit is the lowest form of humor."
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest."
"So vast is art, so narrow human wit."
"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."
"A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left."
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot."
"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
"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."
"Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please,With too much spirit to be e'er at ease,With too much quickness ever to be taught,With too much thinking to have common thought:You purchase pain with all that joy can give,And die of nothing but a rage to live."
"Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; 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 soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come."
"To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,To raise the genius, and to mend the heart"
"If I am right, Thy grace impartStill in the right to stay;If I am wrong, O, teach my heartTo find that better way!"
"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."
"Order is heaven's first law."
"Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."
"They dream in Courtship, but in Wedlock wake."
"Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends."
"How vast a memory has Love!"
"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. It gives one the image of a giant's den in a romance, bestrewed with scattered heads and mangled limbs."
"I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your own, heartily wishing the good, that is the quiet of my country, and 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."
"I am growing fit, I hope, for a better world, of which light of the sun is but a shadow: for I doubt not but God's works here, are what comes nearest to his works there; and that a true relish of the beauties of nature is the most easy preparation and gentlest transition to an enjoyment of those of heaven; as on the contrary a true town life of hurry, confusion, noise, slander, and dissension, is a fort of apprenticeship to hell and its furies... The separation of my soul and body is what I could think of with less pain; for I sm very sure he that made it will take care of it, and in whatever state he pleases it shall be, that state must be right; but I cannot think without tears of beingseparated from my friends, when their condition is so douubtful, that they may want even such assistance as mine"
"I think it was a generous thought, and one that fow'd from an exalted mind, that it was not improbable but God might be delighted with the various methods of worshipping him, which divided the whole world."
"Methinks God has punish'd the Avaritious as he often punishes sinners, in their own way, in the ver sin itself: the thrist of gain was their crime, that thrist continued became their punishment and ruin. As for the few who have the good fortune to remain with half of what they imagined they had (among whom is your humble servantl, I would have them sensible of their felicity, and convinced of the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, who, after half his estate was swallowed by the Directors of those days, resolv'd, that half to be more than the whole."
"Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear."