Poet · English · 1688 – 1744 · 110 quotes
Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
Alexander Pope
Poet · English · 1688 – 1744
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.
Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed.
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
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.
Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause.
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
The most positive men are the most credulous.
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!
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.
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.
Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.
To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
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.
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.
Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
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.
Fools admire, but men of sense approve.
Woman's at best a contradiction still.
Health consists with temperance alone.
Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Gentle dullness ever loves a joke.
Wit is the lowest form of humor.
At ev'ry word a reputation dies.
Passions are the gales of life.
Order is heaven's first law.
The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.
Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
And die of nothing but a rage to live.
Never find fault with the absent.
