Quotes from Alexander Pope

A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

There is no study that is not capable of delighting us, after a little application to it.

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

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense, Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence. But Health consists with Temperance alone, And Peace, oh Virtue! Peace is all thy own.

A perfect Judge will read each work of Wit With the same spirit that its author writ; Survey the WHOLE, nor seek slight faults to find Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind; .... In wit, as nature, what effects our hearts Is not th'exactness of peculiar parts; 'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all.

Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, they rise, they break, and to that sea return.

Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.

I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole; Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll! Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me, Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee. Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign; Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine. Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!) Long lov'd, ador'd ideas, all adieu!

Errare è umano, perdonare divino.

Be thou the first true merit to befriend; His praise is lost, who stays till all commend. Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes, And 'tis but just to let 'em live betimes. No longer now that golden age appears, When patriarch wits surviv'd a thousand years: Now length of Fame (our second life) is lost, And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast; Our sons their fathers' failing language see, And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.

Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense! If once right reason drives that cloud away, Truth breaks upon us with resistless day; Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.

Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all.

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie

Inscriptions here of various Names I view'd, The greater part by hostile time subdu'd; Yet wide was spread their fame in ages past, And Poets once had promis'd they should last.

Be silent always when you doubt your sense; And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence: Some positive, persisting fops we know, Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so; But you, with pleasure own your errors past, And make each day a critic on the last.

Jangan gembira kalau seseorang ditindas, Jangan kesal kalau seseorang mendapat berkah.

Las palabras son como las hojas; cuando abundan, poco fruto hay entre ellas.

He is the English Horace

Celia" Celia, we know, is sixty-five, Yet Celia's face is seventeen; Thus winter in her breast must live, While summer in her face is seen. How cruel Celia's fate, who hence Our heart's devotion cannot try; Too pretty for our reverence, Too ancient for our gallantry!

Be sure yourself and your own reach to know How far your genius taste and learning go.

Make use of every friend— and every foe.