Alexander Pope Quotes
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Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! They had no poet, and they died. In vain they schem'd, in vain they bled! They had no poet, and are dead.
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Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea.
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Thou Great First Cause, least understood Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good And that myself am blind.
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I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
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It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.
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Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
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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.
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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.
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Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.
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Let such, such only tread this sacred floor, Who dare to love their country and be poor.
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And binding Nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.
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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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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.
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For he lives twice who can at once employ The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.
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Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clam'rous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare, They fall, and leave their little lives in air.
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Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.
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They dream in Courtship, but in Wedlock wake.
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Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast, When husbands, or when lapdogs, breathe their last.
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'Boast not my fall (he cried), insulting foe! Thou by some other shalt be laid as low; Nor think to die dejects my lofty mind; All that I dread is leaving you behind! Rather than so, ah let me still survive, And burn in Cupid's flames - but burn alive.'
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Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
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Our passions are like convulsion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.
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What dire offence from amorous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things!
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For, as blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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'Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed' was the ninth Beatitude which a man of wit (who, like a man of wit, was a long time in gaol) added to the eighth.