Alexander Pope Quotes (158 quotes, page 3)

“Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of expiring victims, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there. It gives one the image of a giant's den in a romance, bestrewed with scattered heads and mangled limbs.”

Alexander Pope

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.

Animals , Dead

“The most positive men are the most credulous…”

Alexander Pope

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Positive , Men

“Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain.
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies!”

Alexander Pope

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.”

Alexander Pope Moral Essays

Epistle I, To Lord Cobham (1734), line 150
Moral Essays (1731–1735)

Tree

“A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labour of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.”

Alexander Pope

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Business , Bee , Personality

“Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath,
The clam'rous lapwings feel the leaden death;
Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare,
They fall, and leave their little lives in air.”

Alexander Pope book Windsor Forest

Source: Windsor Forest (1713), Line 131.

Death , Feeling

“True politeness consists in the being easy one-self, and making every body about one as easy as we can.”

Alexander Pope

Statement of 1739, as quoted in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence, p. 286.
Variant reported in Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men (1887) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 451: "True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can."
Attributed

“Methinks God has punish'd the Avaritious as he often punishes sinners, in their own way, in the ver sin itself: the thrist of gain was their crime, that thrist continued became their punishment and ruin. As for the few who have the good fortune to remain with half of what they imagined they had (among whom is your humble servantl, I would have them sensible of their felicity, and convinced of the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, who, after half his estate was swallowed by the Directors of those days, resolv'd, that half to be more than the whole.”

Alexander Pope

In his letter to Atterbury Bishop of Rochester. Sept. 23. 1720.

God , Truth , Way , Imagination

“The stoic husband was the glorious thing.
The man had courage, was a sage, 'tis true,
And lov'd his country.”

Alexander Pope

Epilogue to Rowe's Jane Shore (1714).

Courage , Country

“This casket India's glowing gems unlocks
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto I, line 134.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Box

“The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto III, line 21.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

“Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.”

Alexander Pope

"Ode on Solitude", st. 1 (c. 1700).

Happiness

“Say, is not absence death to those who love?”

Alexander Pope Pastorals

Autumn.
Pastorals (1709)

Love , Death

“Know, sense, like charity, begins at home.”

Alexander Pope

"Umbra", first published in Miscellanies (1727).

Home , Sense

“Luxurious lobster-nights, farewell,
For sober, studious days!”

Alexander Pope

"A Farewell to London" (1715), st. 1.

Night

“Good God! how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? in every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.”

Alexander Pope

Letter, written in collaboration with Dr John Arbuthnot, to Jonathan Swift (December 5, 1732) upon the death of John Gay.

God , Parting

“How vast a memory has Love!”

Alexander Pope

"Sappho to Phaon", line 52 (1712).

Love , Memory

“Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water seem to strive again,
Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised,
But, as the world, harmoniously confused:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree.”

Alexander Pope book Windsor Forest

Source: Windsor Forest (1713), Line 11.

World , Water

“Our passions are like convulsion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.”

Alexander Pope

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Passion , Time

“Unblemish'd let me live, or die unknown;
O grant an honest fame, or grant me none!”

Alexander Pope

Closing line.
The Temple of Fame (1711)

“Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade:
Where'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.”

Alexander Pope Pastorals

Summer, line 73.
Pastorals (1709)

Tree

“Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake,
And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto I, line 15.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Dogs , Lovers

“There various news I heard of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,
Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,
Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,
Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
The fall of favourites, projects of the great,
Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.”

Alexander Pope

Source: The Temple of Fame (1711), Lines 449-458.

Love , Life , Death , War

“I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your own, heartily wishing the good, that is the quiet of my country, and hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.”

Alexander Pope

Letter to Edward Blount (27 August 1714); a similar expression in "Thoughts on Various Subjects" in Swift's Miscellanies (1727): Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.

Hope , Madness , Country

“A god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature.”

Alexander Pope

Isaac Newton: Principia Mathematica (1687); Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy, Rule IV.
Misattributed

God , Fate , Nature

“Well, if our author in the wife offends
He has a husband that will make amends;
He draws him gentle, tender, and forgiving,
And sure such kind good creatures may be living.”

Alexander Pope

Epilogue to Rowe's Jane Shore (1714).

Forgiveness , Drawing

“On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto II, line 7.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Kiss

“Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.”

Alexander Pope

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Men , Youth , Fools , Time

“The famous Lord Hallifax (though so much talked of) was rather a pretender to taste, than really possessed of it.—When I had finished the two or three first books of my translation of the Iliad, that lord, "desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house." Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there at the reading.—In four or five places, Lord Hallifax stopped me very civilly; and with a speech, each time of much the same kind: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me.—Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a little at your leisure.—I am sure you can give it a little turn."—I returned from Lord Hallifax's with Dr. Garth, in his chariot; and as we were going along, was saying to the doctor, that my lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty, by such loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it was that offended his lordship in either of them.—Garth laughed heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long enough acquainted with Lord Hallifax, to know his way yet: that I need not puzzle myself in looking those places over and over when I got home. "All you need do, (said he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Hallifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those passages; and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."—I followed his advice; waited on Lord Hallifax some time after: said, I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed[; ] read them to him exactly as they were at first; and his lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, "Ay now, Mr. Pope, they are perfectly right! nothing can be better."”

Alexander Pope

As quoted in Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [published from the original papers; with notes, and a life of the author, by Samuel Weller Singer]; "Spence's Anecdotes", Section IV. pp. 134–136.
Attributed

Pleasure , Books , Hope , Way

“By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned.”

Alexander Pope

Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 51.

“Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.”

Alexander Pope

"Ode on Solitude", st. 5 (c. 1700).

Lie , World

“Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn,
And liquid amber drop from every thorn.”

Alexander Pope Pastorals

Autumn, line 36.
Pastorals (1709)

“On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates.”

Alexander Pope

Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 37.

Waiting

“For he lives twice who can at once employ
The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.”

Alexander Pope

Imitation of Martial, reported in Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence (1737), Vol. V, p. 232; The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 117. Compare: "Ampliat ætatis spatium sibi vir bonus; hoc est Vivere bis vita posse priore frui" (Translated: "The good man prolongs his life; to be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice"), Martial, X, 237.; "Thus would I double my life's fading space; For he that runs it well, runs twice his race", Abraham Cowley, Discourse XI, Of Myself, stanza xi.

Past

“Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell!
Thy fools no more I'll tease:
This year in peace, ye critics, dwell,
Ye harlots, sleep at ease!”

Alexander Pope

"A Farewell to London" (1715), st. 12.

Peace , Fools , Sleep

“So unaffected, so compos'd a mind;
So firm, yet soft; so strong, yet so refin'd;
Heav'n, as its purest gold, by tortures try'd;
The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died.”

Alexander Pope

"Epitaph on Mrs. Corbet" (1730).

Strong

“Thou Great First Cause, least understood
Who all my sense confined
To know but this, that Thou art good
And that myself am blind.”

Alexander Pope

Stanza 2
Source: The Universal Prayer (1738)

Sense , Art

“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.”

Alexander Pope Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady

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

Heart , Soul , Fools

“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.”

Alexander Pope

Preface
The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717)

Forgiveness , Making love

“Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!”

Alexander Pope

Stanza 1
Source: The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)

Pain , Hope , Flying

“I have nothing to say for rhyme, but that I doubt whether a poem can support itself without it, in our language; unless it be stiffened with such strange words, as are likely to destroy our language itself.”

Alexander Pope

Remark (1738?) quoted in Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [published from the original papers; with notes, and a life of the author, by Samuel Weller Singer]; "Spence's Anecdotes", Section IV. 1737...39. p. 200

Support

“Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto V, line 33
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Soul , Beauty

“For, as blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.”

Alexander Pope

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Whore , Sense , Making love , Fools