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Alexander Pope Quotes

1688–1744 England

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) was a poet and satirist of the Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents. Considered the foremost English poet of the early 18th century and a master of the heroic couplet, he is best known for satirical and discursive poetry.

England
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Poets
Satirists

Also known as: Pope, Alexander

Random Alexander Pope quote

535 quotes

Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,
Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.

Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep.

The Dunciad (1813)

Who combats bravely is not therefore brave:
He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave.

With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought.

To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all!

Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call;
She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all.

The Temple of Fame (1711)

Like doctors thus, when much dispute has past,
We find our tenets just the same at last.

Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,
The Scholar’s learning with the courtier’s ease.

To observations which ourselves we make,
We grow more partial for th' observer's sake.

Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

An Essay on Criticism (1709)

Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My footstool Earth, my canopy the skies.

Teach me to feel another's woe,
To right the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

The Universal Prayer (1738)

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

The Temple of Fame (1711)

Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order and extinguish light.

The balmy zephyrs, silent since her death,
Lament the ceasing of a sweeter breath.

Then take him to develop, if you can
And hew the block off, and get out the man.

Or ask of yonder argent fields above
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove.

Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet
To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.

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

Ode on Solitude (1700)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Alexander Pope (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.