Alexander Pope Quotes
“They dream in Courtship, but in Wedlock wake.”
"The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), line 103.
Odes, Book iv, Ode 9, reported in William Warburton, The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq (1751) p. 31.
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
As quoted in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [arranged, with notes, by the late Edmund Malone], pp. 28–29 & 53–54.
Attributed
“Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast,
When husbands, or when lapdogs, breathe their last.”
Canto III, line 157.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
George Dennison Prentice http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/4820, in Prenticeana (1860)
Misattributed
“Who ne'er knew joy but friendship might divide,
Or gave his father grief but when he died.”
"Epitaph on the Hon. S. Harcourt" (1720).
“Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man.”
Source: Windsor Forest (1713), Line 61.
“Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.”
Canto II, line 27. Compare: "No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii, Section 2, Membrane 1, Subsection 2.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“Never find fault with the absent.”
Absenti nemo non nocuisse velit.
Sextus Propertius, Elegies, II, xix, 32, also translated: "Let no one be willing to speak ill of the absent".
Misattributed
“If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.”
Canto II, line 17.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
Canto II, line 105.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)
“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).
“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.
“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)
