Best quotes by Alexander Pope

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake.

As some to Church repair, not for the doctrine, but the music there.

But if you'll prosper, mark what I advise, Whom age, and long experience render wise.

Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; Bliss is the same in subject or in king.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

All other goods by fortune's hand are given, A wife is the peculiar gift of Heaven.

And make each day a critic on the last.

Art still followed where Rome's eagles flew.

The grave unites; where e'en the great find rest, And blended lie th' oppressor and th' oppressed!

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

Never was it given to mortal man - To lie so boldly as we women can.

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

Whenever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generosity if he were a rich man.

A perfect woman's but a softer man.

A disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.

No writing is good that does not tend to better mankind in some way or other.

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

Thus unlamented pass the proud away, The gaze of fools and pageant of a day; So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow For others' good, or melt at others' woe.

All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

Wine lets no lover unrewarded go.

Envy will merit as its shade pursue, But like a shadow, proves the substance true.

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

Unthought-of Frailties cheat us in the Wise.

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

Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.

Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of readier change.

Let Joy or Ease, let Affluence or Content, And the gay Conscience of a life well spent, Calm ev'ry thought, inspirit ev'ry grace, Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face.

Who are next to knaves? Those that converse with them.

Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; the strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.

With sharpen'd sight pale Antiquaries pore, Th' inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears; The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.

A man who admires a fine woman, has yet not more reason to wish himself her husband, than one who admired the Hesperian fruit, would have had to wish himself the dragon that kept it.

Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.

Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.

Who dare to love their country, and be poor.

A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants.

I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

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.

Physicians are in general the most amiable companions and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know.

Great oaks grow from little acorns. He has a green thumb. He has green fingers. He's sowing his wild oats. Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand, And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

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.

A patriot is a fool in ev'ry age.

I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.

Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend.

Wine works the heart up, wakes the wit, There is no cure 'gainst age but it

The difference is as great between The optics seeing as the objects seen. All manners take a tincture from our own; Or come discolor'd through out passions shown; Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound, Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.

The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong.

You purchase pain with all that joy can give and die of nothing but a rage to live.

The people's voice is odd, It is, and it is not, the voice of God.

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

Fame can never make us lie down contentedly on a deathbed.

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.

A king is a mortal god on earth, unto whom the living God hath lent his own name as a great honour; but withal told him, he should die like a man, lest he should be proud, and flatter himself that God hath with his name imparted unto him his nature also. JOHN LOCKE, "Of a King", The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political A king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough: a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn.

A youth of frolic, an old age of cards.

We ought, in humanity, no more to despise a man for the misfortunes of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he cannot help; were this thoroughly considered we should no more laugh at a man for having his brains cracked than for having his head broke.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgement, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is PRIDE, the never-failing vice of fools.

In this commonplace world every one is said to be romantic who either admires a fine thing or does one.

The laughers are a majority.

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows.

And seem to walk on wings, and tread in air.

I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

He best can paint them who shall feel them most.

Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents , or my own?

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

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Sleep and death, two twins of winged race, Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace.

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

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

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!

A little learning is a dangerous thing.