Alexander Pope Quotes
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For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
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Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake.
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Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain, Here earth and water seem to strive again, Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised, But, as the world, harmoniously confused: Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree.
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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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What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
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Know, sense, like charity, begins at home.
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Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
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I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken.
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To err is human, to forgive divine.
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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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A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labour of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
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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.
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Well, if our author in the wife offendsHe has a husband that will make amends;He draws him gentle, tender, and forgiving,And sure such kind good creatures may be living.
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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.
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Such were the notes thy once lov'd poet sung, Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.
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A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,And drinking largely sobers us again.
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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.
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From old Belerium to the northern main.
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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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The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, forever, and forever! Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes, And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies.
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So unaffected, so compos'd a mind; So firm, yet soft; so strong, yet so retin'd; Heav'n, as its purest gold, by tortures try'd; The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died.
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Who ne'er knew joy but friendship might divide, Or gave his father grief but when he died.
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To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.
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Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I'll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!