Quotes from Alexander Pope

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake.

Know, Nature's children all divide her care, The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear.

Of all affliction taught a lover yet, 'Tis true the hardest science to forget.

It is sure the hardest science to forget!

How index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds the eel of science by the tail!

Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd and make the learned smile.

Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm.

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.

This long disease, my life.

Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.

The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life.

The young disease, that must subdue at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.

Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; the strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.

For when success a lover's toil attends,Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

Passions are the gales of life.

What is fame? a fancied life in others' breath.

For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight; his can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth.

What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man.