Best quotes by Alexander Pope

To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines, Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines.

Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.

Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call, And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.

Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.

She went from opera, park, assembly, play, To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day. To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea, To muse, and spill her solitary tea, Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon, Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.

Like following life through creatures you dissect, You lose it in the moment you detect.

Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return.

Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate and rot.

Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state.

In vain sedate reflections we would make When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.

What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.

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.

For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned.The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ... At once they gratify their scent and taste.And frequent cups prolong the rich repast... Coffee (which makes the politician wise And see through all things with his half-shut eyes).

Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well?

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

You eat, in dreams, the custard of the day.

Is that a birthday? 'tis, alas! too clear; 'Tis but the funeral of the former year.

There are some solitary wretches who seem to have left the rest of mankind, only, as Eve left Adam, to meet the devil in private.

A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows.

Cursed be the verse, how well so e'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe.

Education forms the common mind.

Fondly we think we honor merit then, when we but praise ourselves in other men.

But thousands die without or this or that, Die, and endow a college or a cat.

What bosom beast not in his country's cause?

To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, who never mentions hell to ears polite.

That virtue only makes our bliss below, And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.

Thus God and nature linked the gen'ral frame, And bade self-love and social be the same.

There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead.

The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712) -Vital spark of heav'nly flame! Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Stanza 1.

The villain's censure is extorted praise.

One self-approving hour whole years outweighs.

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things.

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all.

The enormous faith of many made for one.

Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.

The flower's are gone when the Fruits appear to ripen.

The search of our future being is but a needless, anxious, and haste to be knowing, sooner than we can, what, without all this solicitude, we shall know a little later.

Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.

The cabinets of the sick and the closets of the dead have been ransacked to publish private letters and divulge to all mankind the most secret sentiments of friendship.

The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer.

The character of covetousness, is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore; What future bliss He gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.

Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own because they resemble the Ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own, because they are like our Fathers: And indeed it is very unreasonable, that people should expect us to be Scholars, and yet be angry to find us so.

The race by vigour, not by vaunts, is won.

When two people compliment each other with the choice of anything, each of them generally gets that which he likes least.

A perfect judge will read each word of wit with the same spirit that its author writ.

Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.

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

Time conquers all, and we must time obey.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

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.

Genius involves both envy and calumny.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.

On cold December fragrant chaplets blow, And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.

The blest to-day is as completely so, As who began a thousand years ago.

With too much quickness ever to be taught; With too much thinking to have common thought.

Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.

Of fight or fly, This choice is left ye, to resist or die.

No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n, Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n; But such plain roofs as Piety could raise, And only vocal with the Maker's praise.

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

The nicest constitutions of government are often like the finest pieces of clock-work, which, depending on so many motions, are therefore more subject to be out of order.

You beat your Pate, and fancy Wit will come: Knock as you please, there's no body at home.

Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow: Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.

Our business in the field of fight, Is not to question, but to prove our might.

Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.

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

No Senses stronger than his brain can bear. Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly: What the advantage, if his finer eyes Study a Mite, not comprehend the Skies?... Or quick Effluvia darting thro' his brain, Die of a Rose, in Aromatic pain? If Nature thunder'd in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the Spheres... Who finds not Providence all-good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

To be, contents his natural desire, He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company. Go wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense Weigh thy opinion against Providence.

Luxurious lobster-nights, farewell, For sober, studious days!

Who dies in youth and vigour, dies the best.

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