Top 500 Alexander Pope Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.”

— Alexander Pope

152. “Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”

— Alexander Pope

153. “To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, who never mentions hell to ears polite.”

— Alexander Pope

154. “Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.”

— Alexander Pope

155. “False happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.”

— Alexander Pope

156. “The fool is happy that he knows no more.”

— Alexander Pope

157. “What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.”

— Alexander Pope

158. “Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.”

— Alexander Pope

159. “They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.”

— Alexander Pope

160. “But just disease to luxury succeeds, And ev’ry death its own avenger breeds.”

— Alexander Pope

161. “Wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense!”

— Alexander Pope

162. “Hear how the birds, on ev’ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.”

— Alexander Pope

163. “There still remains to mortify a wit The many-headed monster of the pit.”

— Alexander Pope

164. “So vast is art, so narrow human wit.”

— Alexander Pope

165. “How vast a memory has Love!”

— Alexander Pope

166. “True self-love and social are the same.”

— Alexander Pope

167. “A perfect woman’s but a softer man.”

— Alexander Pope

168. “Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear.”

— Alexander Pope

169. “I lose my patience, and I own it too, When works are censur’d, not as bad but new; While if our Elders break all reason’s laws, These fools demand not pardon but Applause.”

— Alexander Pope

170. “Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!”

— Alexander Pope

171. “In death a hero, as in life a friend!”

— Alexander Pope

172. “Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn, And liquid amber drop from every thorn.”

— Alexander Pope

173. “On wings of wind came flying all abroad.”

— Alexander Pope

174. “The most positive men are the most credulous.”

— Alexander Pope

175. “To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise.”

— Alexander Pope

176. “Rogues in rags are kept in countenance by rogues in ruffles.”

— Alexander Pope

177. “A king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough; a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn.”

— Alexander Pope

178. “Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.”

— Alexander Pope

179. “Who know but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar’s mind.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

181. “To endeavor to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.”

— Alexander Pope

182. “No louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, When husbands or lap-dogs breathe their last.”

— Alexander Pope

183. “Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv’n, That each may fill the circle mark’d by heaven.”

— Alexander Pope

184. “Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God, afraid of me.”

— Alexander Pope

185. “Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet to run amok and tilt at all I meet.”

— Alexander Pope

186. “Two purposes in human nature rule. Self- love to urge, and reason to restrain.”

— Alexander Pope

187. “And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances and the public show.”

— Alexander Pope

188. “Drink is the feast of reason and the flow of soul.”

— Alexander Pope

189. “In faith and hope the world will disagree, but all mankind’s concern is charity.”

— Alexander Pope

190. “Some praise at morning what they blame at night, but always think the last opinion right.”

— Alexander Pope

191. “Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; the strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.”

— Alexander Pope

192. “Say first, of god above or man below; what can we reason but from what we know.”

— Alexander Pope

193. “The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleas’d to the last he crops the flow’ry food, And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.”

— Alexander Pope

194. “Beauty draws us with a single hair.”

— Alexander Pope

195. “Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear; Who broke no promise, serv’d no private end, Who gain’d no title, and who lost no friend.”

— Alexander Pope

196. “Eye Nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man.”

— Alexander Pope

197. “Monuments, like men, submit to fate.”

— Alexander Pope

198. “Some to conceit alone their taste confine, And glittering thoughts struck out at ev’ry line; Pleas’d with a work where nothing’s just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.”

— Alexander Pope

199. “Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express’d, Is like a clown in regal purple dress’d.”

— Alexander Pope

200. “See how the World its Veterans rewards! A Youth of Frolics, an old Age of Cards; Fair to no purpose, artful to no end, Young without Lovers, old without a Friend; A Fop their Passion, but their Prize a Sot; Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot.”

— Alexander Pope