535 quotes
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.
Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear.
Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.
A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practice it.
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.
Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
An Essay on Criticism (1711)
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
The Rape of the Lock (1712)
Say, is not absence death to those who love?
Pastorals (1709)
"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.
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
An Essay on Man (1734)
Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.
Ode on Solitude (1700)
Blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.
Yet still a sad, good Christian at the heart.
I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.
The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717)
Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but impairs what it would improve.