535 quotes
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Like following life through creatures you dissect,
You lose it in the moment you detect.
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunello.
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;
Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)
With varying vanities, from ev'ry part,
They shift the moving toyshop of their heart.
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
What nature wants, commodious gold bestows;
'Tis thus we cut the bread another sows.
You purchase pain with all that joy can give,
And die of nothing but a rage to live.
'Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav'n.
To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions hell to ears polite.
To dazzle let the vain design,
To raise the thought and touch the heart, be thine!
There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.
Heaven gave to woman the peculiar grace
To spin, to weep, and cully human race.
But to the world no bugbear is so great,
As want of figure and a small estate.
But as the world, harmoniously confused,
Where order in variety we see;
And where, tho' all things differ, all agree.
Windsor Forest; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds.
Old politicians chew on wisdom past,
And totter on in business to the last.
Lely on animated canvas stole
The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
An Essay on Criticism (1709)