Words matter. These are the best Alexander Pope Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.
And, after all, what is a lie? ‘Tis but the truth in a masquerade.
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Gentle dullness ever loves a joke.
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.
Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.
A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
I find myself 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.
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Party-spirit at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
‘Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.
One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.
Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.
Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.
Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
‘Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
True politeness consists in being easy one’s self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?
To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
Woman’s at best a contradiction still.
If a man’s character is to be abused there’s nobody like a relative to do the business.
A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest.
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
Order is heaven’s first law.
Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.
Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
Fools admire, but men of sense approve.
But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?
Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?
All nature is but art unknown to thee.
Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.
And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.
An honest man’s the noblest work of God.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th’ observer’s sake.
Those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.
There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.
The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.
Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.
Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
Never find fault with the absent.
Health consists with temperance alone.
And die of nothing but a rage to live.
Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.
Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause.
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
