Quotes from Alexander Pope

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n.

Virtuous and vicious every man must be, few in the extreme, but all in the degree.

Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare; And beauty draws us with a single hair.

And each blasphemer quite escape the rod, Because the insult's not on man, but God?

Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust.

Whenever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generosity if he were a rich man.

Physicians are in general the most amiable companions and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know.

A perfect woman's but a softer man.

Cursed be the verse, how well so e'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe.

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

No, make me mistress to the man I love; If there be yet another name more free More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!

Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God, afraid of me.

But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.

The lot of man - to suffer and to die.

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer being here below?

Praise is like ambergrease: a little whiff of it, and by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to your nose, it is a stink, and strikes you down.

So man, who here seems principal alone, Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score.

Where's the man who counsel can bestow, still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know.

Say first, of god above or man below; what can we reason but from what we know.

The heart resolves this matter in a trice, "Men only feel the smart, but not the vice.

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; The rest is all but leather and prunello.