“What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?”
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 1. Compare: "What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew, Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?", Ben Jonson, Elegy on the Lady Jane Pawlet.
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
“And binding Nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.”
Stanza 3.
The Universal Prayer (1738)
“Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call;
She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all.”
Source: The Temple of Fame (1711), Line 513.
the last two lines are a quote of 1 Corinthians 15:55 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/1_Corinthians#15:55.
The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)
“Passions…are the gales of life…”
As quoted by Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke in a letter to Jonathan Swift (29 March 1730).
Attributed
“This is the Jew
That Shakespeare drew.”
As quoted in various reports, including Charles Wells Moulton, The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors (1901), p. 342; William Dunlap, The Life of George Frederick Cooke (1815), p. 26 (quoting an apparently contemporaneous journal account by the subject). Bartlett's Quotations, 10th edition (1919), reports that on the 14th of February, 1741, Macklin established his fame as an actor in the character of Shylock, in the "Merchant of Venice". Macklin's performance of this character so forcibly struck a gentleman in the pit that he, as it were involuntarily, exclaimed,—
“This is the Jew
That Shakespeare drew!”
It has been said that this gentleman was Mr. Pope, and that he meant his panegyric on Macklin as a satire against Lord Lansdowne", Biographia Dramatica, vol. i. part II. p. 469.
Attributed
“Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.”
From Roscoe's edition of Pope, vol. v. p. 376; originally printed in Motte's Miscellanies (1727). In the edition of 1736 Pope says, "I must own that the prose part (the Thought on Various Subjects), at the end of the second volume, was wholly mine. January, 1734".
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 71.
Canto III, line 153.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
Edward Young, "Night Thoughts," (1742-1745) Part IX http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/young_night_thoughts.pdf.
Misattributed
“Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy.”
Martinus Scriblerus on the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Chap. xi, reported in William Warburton, The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq (1751) p. 196.
“Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!”
The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)
“Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.”
Pope's reply when told by his physician that he was better, on the morning of his death (30 May 1744), as quoted by Owen Ruffhead in The Life of Alexander Pope; With a Critical Essay on His Writings and Genius (1769), p. 475.
“Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.”
Canto IV, line 123.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
Spence's Anecdotes and The Guardian (21 May 1713); as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), p. 132.
“The most positive men are the most credulous…”
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Samuel Rogers, in The Pleasures of Memory (1792), Part http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13586/.
Misattributed
“Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.”
Epistle I, To Lord Cobham (1734), line 150
Moral Essays (1731–1735)