Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Alexander Pope Poet

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: England
  • Born: May 21, 1688
  • Died: May 30, 1744

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson.

An honest man's the noblest work of God.

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

Party-spirit at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

The learned is happy, nature to explore The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce In man they join to some mysterious use.

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

A little learning is a dangerous thing Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Woman's at best a contradiction still.

One science only will one genius fit so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Health consists with temperance alone.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

'Tis education forms the common mind just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

To err is human to forgive, divine.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.

If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read With loads of learned lumber in his head.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

For Forms of Government let fools contest whatever is best administered is best.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

Never was it given to mortal man - To lie so boldly as we women can.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan The proper study of mankind is man.