Alexander Pope Quotes
Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made, One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade, The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd, The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but it impairs what it would improve.
As with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring out.
Pleas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind,And count each birthday with a grateful mind.
Order is Heaven's first law; and this confess, Some are and must be greater than the rest.
Sleep and death, two twins of winged race, Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace.
It is very natural for a young friend and a young lover to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them.
True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.
A king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough; a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn.
The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Coffee which makes the politician wise, and see through all things with his half-shut eyes.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best.
Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.
That character in conversation which commonly passes for agreeable is made up of civility and falsehood.
Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven.
Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring, Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing, Ye trees that fade, when Autumn heats remove, Say, is not absence death to those who love?
Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.
Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.
Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.
With sharpen'd sight pale Antiquaries pore, Th' inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears; The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.
I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures.
