535 quotes
From old Belerium to the northern main.
Windsor Forest (1713)
No more was seen the human form divine.
"Get Money, money still!
And then let virtue follow, if she will."
This, this the saving doctrine preach'd to all,
From low St. James' up to high St. Paul.
Ignobly vain, and impotently great.
Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato (1713)
A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Or looks on heav'n with more than mortal eyes,
Bids his free soul expatiate in the skies,
Amid her kindred stars familiar roam,
Survey the region, and confess her home.
If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind:
Or, ravish'd with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell, damn'd to everlasting fame.
Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long Absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: Absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer.
Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore;
What future bliss He gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
An Essay on Man (1734)
Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain,
These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd
Make and maintain the balance of the mind.
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee,
From Thee to nothing.
Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,
With whom my muse began, with whom shall end.
The Dunciad (1813)
Vital spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame.
Trade it may help, society extend,
But lures the Pirate, and corrupts the friend:
It raises armies in a nation's aid,
But bribes a senate, and the land's betray'd.
At length corruption, like a general flood
(So long by watchful ministers withstood),
Shall deluge all; and avarice, creeping on,
Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.
Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato (1713)
Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore;
So much the better, you may laugh the more.
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
When truth or virtue an affront endures,
Th' affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours.