Quotes from Alexander Pope

'Tis education forms the common mind:Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclin'd.

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

Wise wretch! with pleasures too refin'd to please;With too much spirit to be e'er at ease;With too much quickness ever to be taught;With too much thinking to have common thought.You purchase pain with all that joy can give,And die of nothing but a rage to live.

Then, at the last and only couplet fraughtWith some unmeaning thing they call a thought,A needless Alexandrine ends the song,That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

I've often wish'd that I had clear,For life, six hundred pounds a year;A handsome house to lodge a friend,A river at my garden's end,A terrace walk, and half a roodOf land set out to plant a wood.

Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav'n.

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

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,And unawares Morality expires.Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!Lo! thy dread empire Chaos! is restor'd:Light dies before thy uncreating word;Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,And universal darkness buries all.

As some to church repair,Not for the doctrine, but the music there.These equal syllables alone require,Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;While expletives their feeble aid do join,And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

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

Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said;Tie up the knocker! say I'm sick, I'm dead.The Dog-star rages!

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

Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,A hero perish or a sparrow fall,Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

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.

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,And solid pudding against empty praise.

Luxurious lobster-nights, farewell,For sober, studious days!

True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd,Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

Coffee, which makes the politicians wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.

Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom,Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

We may see the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them to.

True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.