Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer, and he is also famous for his use of the heroic couplet. He is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare.
“Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”
Canto V, line 33.
Variant: Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
Source: The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I meet that argument — I rush in — I take that bull by the horns. I trust I understand and truly estimate the right of self-government. My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities of men as well as to individuals. I so extend it because it is politically wise, as well as naturally just: politically wise in saving us from broils about matters which do not concern us. Here, or at Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is right, — absolutely and eternally right, — but it has no just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may as a matter of self-government do just what he pleases with him.
But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government — that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.
1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Source: An Essay on Criticism
“Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed”
Letter, written in collaboration with John Gay, to William Fortescue (23 September 1725).
A similar remark was made in a letter to John Gay (16 October 1727): "I have many years magnify'd in my own mind, and repeated to you a ninth Beatitude, added to the eight in the Scripture: Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."
Variant: Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
Context: "Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed" was the ninth Beatitude which a man of wit (who, like a man of wit, was a long time in gaol) added to the eighth.
“Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!"”
and all was light.
Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton.
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
In a 1715 letter (LXXVII), as found in Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope: And Several of His Friends. 1737.
“They shift the moving toyshop of their heart.”
Canto I, line 100.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
Canto V, line 97.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“But when mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!”
Canto III, line 125.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“At every word a reputation dies.”
Canto III, line 16.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea.”
Canto III, line 7.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.”
Canto II, line 52.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
Stanza 2.
The Universal Prayer (1738)
“Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.”
Canto II, line 13.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.”
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 45. Compare Pope's The Odyssey of Homer, Book XVIII, line 269.
Context: Lo these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd,
And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.
“Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame”
Stanza 1.
The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)
Context: Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
“I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets.”
Preface.
The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717)
Context: I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken.
“Heav'n, as its purest gold, by tortures try'd;
The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died.”
"Epitaph on Mrs. Corbet" (1730).
Context: So unaffected, so compos'd a mind;
So firm, yet soft; so strong, yet so retin'd;
Heav'n, as its purest gold, by tortures try'd;
The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died.
Preface.
The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717)
Context: I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.
“Lo these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd,
And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.”
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 45. Compare Pope's The Odyssey of Homer, Book XVIII, line 269.
Context: Lo these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd,
And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield.
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.
“What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.”
Source: Essay on Man and Other Poems
“Act well your part; there all the honour lies.”
Source: An Essay on Man
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Source: Miscellanies in Verse and Prose. by Alexander Pope, Esq; And Dean Swift. in One Volume. Viz. the Strange and Deplorable Frensy of Mr. John Dennis. ... Epitaph on Francis Ch-Is. Soldier and Scholar. with Several More Epigrams, Epitaphs, and Poems.
“Our judgments, like our watches, none
go just alike, yet each believes his own”
Source: An Essay on Criticism
“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.”
Source: An Essay on Criticism (1711)
Source: Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato (1713), Line 1.
The Universal Prayer (1738)
Source: Moral Essays
“The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!”
Source: Eloisa to Abelard
“Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.”
Letter to Henry Cromwell (19 October 1709).
Source: Letters of the Late Alexander Pope, Esq. to a Lady. Never Before Published
“And die of nothing but a rage to live”
Variant: You purchase pain with all that joy can give and die of nothing but a rage to live.
Source: Moral Essays
“Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot.”
Source: An Essay on Criticism
“I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?”
"On the Collar of a Dog".
Source: Epistles and Satires of Alexander Pope
“What dire offence from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things!”
Canto I, line 1.
Source: The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd.”
Source: An Essay on Man
Letter, written in collaboration with Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, to Jonathan Swift, December 14, 1725.
Reported in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 832: "Verbatim from Boileau", written c. 1740, published 1741.. Compare: "Tenez voilà", dit-elle, "à chacun une écaille, Des sottises d'autrui nous vivons au Palais; Messieurs, l'huître étoit bonne. Adieu. Vivez en paix", Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux, Epître II. (à M. l'Abbé des Roches).
“Let spades be trumps! she said, and trumps they were.”
Canto III, line 46.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
“Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.”
"The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), line 369.
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
“And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show.”
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 57.
“Each finding like a friend
Something to blame, and something to commend.”
"Epistle to Mr. Jervas" (1717), lines 21–22.
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
