Alexander Pope Quotes

The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare? For this your locks in paper durance bound, For this with tort'ring irons wreath'd around? 100 For this with fillets strain'd your tender head, And bravely bore the double loads of lead?

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d

Averse alike to flatter, or offend;
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

Some praise at morning what they blame at night,
But always think the last opinion right.
A Muse by these is like a mistress used,
This hour she's idolized, the next abused;
While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,
'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.
Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;
And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.

But always think the last opinion right.

Thou Great First Cause, least understood Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good And that myself am blind.

Music resembles poetry, in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master hand alone can reach.

There various news I heard of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,
Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,
Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,
Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
The fall of favourites, projects of the great,
Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.

A little Learning is a dangerous Thing.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.

Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.

The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole Can never be a mouse of any soul.

The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, is the cause of Man's error and misery.

Say, is not absence death to those who love?