Quotes by Alexander Pope

Oh let me live my own! and die so too! (To live and die is all I have to do:) Maintain a poets dignity and ease, And see what friends, and read what books I please.

Men, some to business take, some to pleasure take; but every woman is at heart a rake

What then remains, but well our power to use,And keep good humour still whate’er we lose?And trust me, dear, good humour can prevail,When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul

To err is human, to forgive, divine.

True wit is nature to advantage dressed;What oft was thought, but neer so well expressed.

If it be the chief point of friendship to comply with a friends notions and inclinations he possesses this is an eminent degree; he lies down when I sit, and walks when I walk, which is more that many good friends can pretend to do.

What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.

chaos of thought and passion, all confusd.

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

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

Where beams of imagination play,The memorys soft figures melt away.

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,Make use of evry friend—and evry foe.

Happy the man, whose wish and careA few paternal acres bound,Content to breathe his native airIn his own ground.

Those half-learnd witlings, numrous in our isle As half-formd insects on the banks of Nile

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

Know then thyself; presume not God to scan,The proper study of mankind is Man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,And too much weakness for the Stoics pride,He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;In doubt his mind or body to prefer;Born but to die, and reasning but to err.Alike in ignorance, his reason such,Whether he thinks too little or too much.

Then say not mans imperfect, Heavn in fault;. Say rather, mans as perfect as he ought.

Heavn from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribd, their present state; From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer Being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play? Pleasd to the last, he crops the flowry food, And licks the hand just raisd to shed his blood. Oh blindness to the future! kindly givn, That each may fill the circle markd by Heavn; Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall.

For forms of Government let fools contest. Whateer is best administered is best.

Nature to all things fixed the limits fitAnd wisely curbed proud mans pretending wit.As on the land while here the ocean gains.In other parts it leaves wide sandy plainsThus in the soul while memory prevails,The solid power of understanding failsWhere beams of warm imagination play,The memorys soft figures melt awayOne science only will one genius fit,So vast is art, so narrow human witNot only bounded to peculiar arts,But oft in those confined to single partsLike kings, we lose the conquests gained before,By vain ambition still to make them moreEach might his several province well command,Would all but stoop to what they understand.