If faith itself has different dresses worn,
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?
Quotes from An Essay on Criticism — Alexander Pope
1688–1744 England
← All quotes by Alexander Pope
56 quotes
Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations
By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Avoid Extremes; and shun the fault of such
Who still are pleas'd too little or too much.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
All seems infected that the infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.
An Essay on Criticism (1711)
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Be niggards of advice on no pretense;
For the worst avarice is that of sense.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Whatever Nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful Pride.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Ah, ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Nor in the Critic let the Man be lost.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
An Essay on Criticism (1711)
Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
As some to Church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Attribution
Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Alexander Pope (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.