Often I am amazed at how quotations from authors and poets of the yesteryears -- such as Alexander Pope -- remain true even today. Read this list of quotes to see the inherent truth in the words of Alexander Pope. Famous Alexander pope quotes are favorites of quotation lovers everywhere. If you want me to include your favorite Alexander Pope quotes on this site, please fill out the quotation suggestion form.
Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid, Some banish’d lover, or some captive maid.
Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.
’T is true,’t is certain; man though dead retains, Part of himself: the immortal mind remains.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?
Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words — health, peace, and competence.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescrib’d, their present state.
I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning; And he whose fustian’s so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad.
Curse on all laws but those which love has made! Love, free as air at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize, And to be swift is less than to be wise.’T is more by art than force of num’rous strokes.
Stuff the head, With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, And greatly falling with a falling state. While Cato gives his little senate laws, What bosom beats not in his country’s cause?
Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice — A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.
Of all the causes which conspire to blind, Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind; What the weak head with strongest bias rules — Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found — Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies: They fall successive, and successive rise.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.’T is not enough no harshness gives offence — The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right
On this page is a collection of short quotations by Alexander Pope. It is interesting to see how much meaning can be conveyed in so few wor
Die of a rose in aromatic pain.
At every word a reputation dies.
Achilles absent was Achilles still.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
The lot of man — to suffer and to die.
Gentle of speech, beneficent of mind.
Woman’s at best a contradiction still.
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
In youth and beauty wisdom is but rare!
For love deceives the best of womankind.
For too much rest itself becomes a pain.
And for our country’t is a bliss to die.
Praise undeserv’d is scandal in disguise.
Short is my date, but deathless my renown.
Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind.
And seem to walk on wings, and tread in air.
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