“Coffee, which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.”
Canto III, line 117.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.”
Heraclitus, Fragments, 54; http://philoctetes.free.fr/heraclitefraneng.htm and http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/HERAC.HTM; also translated in such variants as:
The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one
The hidden harmony is better than the open one.
Misattributed
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
“Let such, such only tread this sacred floor,
Who dare to love their country and be poor.”
Inscription on the entrance to his grotto in Twickenham, published in "Verses on a Grotto by the River Thames at Twickenham, composed of Marbles, Spars and Minerals", line 14, (written 1740, published 1741); also quoted as "Who dared to love their country, and be poor."
“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.”
Credited as Epigram: An Empty House (1727), or On a Dull Writer; alternately attributed to Jonathan Swift in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303.
Misattributed
“Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.”
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 13.
Stanza 1.
The Universal Prayer (1738)
Source: Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato (1713), Line 21. Pope also uses the reference, "Like Cato, give his little Senate laws", in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), Prologue to Imitations of Horace.
Le génie enfante, le goût conserve. Le goût est le bon sens du génie; sans le goût, le génie n'est qu'une sublime folie.
François-René de Chateaubriand, in "Essai sur la littérature anglaise (1836): Modèles classiques http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=NUMM-101390&M=tdm.
Misattributed
“The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.”
"The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), lines 298-299. Compare: "I hold a mouses wit not worth a leke, That hath but on hole for to sterten to", Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Wif of Bathes Prologue", line 6154; "The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken", George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum.
Stanza 10; this extends upon the theme evident in the lines of Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene (1596), Book V, Canto ii, Stanza 42: "Who will not mercie unto others show, How can he mercy ever hope to have?"
The Universal Prayer (1738)
Stanza 7.
The Universal Prayer (1738)
“A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.”
Une oeuvre où il y a des théories est comme un objet sur lequel on laisse la marque du prix.
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, part VII: Time Regained, chapter III, "An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes" ( French version http://web.archive.org/web/20010708070436/http://gallica.bnf.fr/proust/TempsRetrouve.htm and English translation http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96t/chapter3.html).
Misattributed
“Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;
In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child.”
"Epitaph on Gay" (1733), lines 1-2. Reported in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 818. Compare: "Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child", John Dryden, Elegy on Mrs. Killegrew, line 70.
“Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear.”
"Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer" (1721).
“The garlands fade, the vows are worn away;
So dies her love, and so my hopes decay.”
Autumn, line 70.
Pastorals (1709)
“Tell me, my soul, can this be death?”
The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)
Preface.
The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717)
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 6.
“Such were the notes thy once lov'd poet sung,
Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.”
"Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer" preface to Thomas Parnell's Poems on Several Occasions (1721).