Quotes from Alexander Pope

The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.

Pleas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind,And count each birthday with a grateful mind.

Is that a birthday? 'tis, alas! too clear; 'Tis but the funeral of the former year.

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

Be ni...rds of advice on no pretense, For the worst avarice is that of sense.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see

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 critique on the last.

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?

Sleep and death, two twins of winged race, Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace.

And die of nothing but a rage to live.

Death, only death, can break the lasting chain; And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

Till tired he sleeps and life's poor play is o'er.

Education forms the common mind.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read With loads of learned lumber in his head.

Thus education forms the common mind Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.

A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants.

Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.

Is there a parson much bemused in beer, a maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, a clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross, who pens a stanza when he should engross?