Top 500 Alexander Pope Quotes (2023 Update)
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251. “Like following life through creatures you dissect, You lose it in the moment you detect.”

— Alexander Pope

252. “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.”

— Alexander Pope

253. “The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

— Alexander Pope

254. “Cursed be the verse, how well so e’er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe.”

— Alexander Pope

255. “Why did I write? whose sin to me unknown Dipt me in ink, my parents’, or my own? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came.”

— Alexander Pope

256. “Be niggards of advice on no pretense; For the worst avarice is that of sense.”

— Alexander Pope

257. “Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense.”

— Alexander Pope

258. “Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows.”

— Alexander Pope

259. “Do you find yourself making excuses when you do not perform? Shed the excuses and face reality. Excuses are the loser’s way out. They will mar your credibility and stunt your personal growth.”

— Alexander Pope

260. “Know then, unnumber’d Spirits round thee fly, The light Militia of the lower sky.”

— Alexander Pope

261. “To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines, Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines.”

— Alexander Pope

262. “Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.”

— Alexander Pope

263. “You eat, in dreams, the custard of the day.”

— Alexander Pope

264. “Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But every woman is at heart a rake.”

— Alexander Pope

265. “The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.”

— Alexander Pope

266. “Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words,-health, peace, and competence.”

— Alexander Pope

267. “Virtue alone is happiness below.”

— Alexander Pope

268. “Envy will merit as its shade pursue, But like a shadow, proves the substance true.”

— Alexander Pope

269. “For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other’s aid, like man and wife.”

— Alexander Pope

270. “The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.”

— Alexander Pope

271. “The lot of man – to suffer and to die.”

— Alexander Pope

272. “Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it, If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.”

— Alexander Pope

273. “A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.”

— Alexander Pope

274. “Who combats bravely is not therefore brave, He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave: Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise,- His pride in reasoning, not in acting lies.”

— Alexander Pope

275. “The soul’s calm sunshine and heartfelt joy.”

— Alexander Pope

276. “No, make me mistress to the man I love; If there be yet another name more free More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!”

— Alexander Pope

277. “Is it, in Heav’n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender or too firm a heart, To act a lover’s or a Roman’s part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky For those who greatly think, or bravely die?”

— Alexander Pope

278. “From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.”

— Alexander Pope

279. “Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide, First strip off all her equipage of Pride, Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress, Or Learning’s Luxury or idleness, Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.”

— Alexander Pope

280. “Sleep and death, two twins of winged race, Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace.”

— Alexander Pope

281. “He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.”

— Alexander Pope

282. “Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land? All fear, none aid you, and few understand.”

— Alexander Pope

283. “Learn of the little nautilus to sail, Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.”

— Alexander Pope

284. “Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; Learn from the beasts the physic of the field; The arts of building from the bee receive; Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave.”

— Alexander Pope

285. “For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight; his can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.”

— Alexander Pope

286. “Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven.”

— Alexander Pope

287. “Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please, With too much spirit to be e’er at ease, With too much quickness ever to be taught, With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.”

— Alexander Pope

288. “Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place.”

— Alexander Pope

289. “The difference is as great between The optics seeing as the objects seen. All manners take a tincture from our own; Or come discolor’d through out passions shown; Or fancy’s beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.”

— Alexander Pope

290. “Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes: the glorious fault of angels and of gods.”

— Alexander Pope

291. “Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies.”

— Alexander Pope

292. “She who ne’er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; Charms by accepting, by submitting, sways, Yet has her humor most, when she obeys.”

— Alexander Pope

293. “On cold December fragrant chaplets blow, And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.”

— Alexander Pope

294. “The sound must seem an echo to the sense.”

— Alexander Pope

295. “All nature is but art unknown to thee.”

— Alexander Pope

296. “Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”

— Alexander Pope

297. “Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.”

— Alexander Pope

298. “O happiness! our being’s end and aim! Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate’er thy name: That something still which prompts the eternal sigh, For which we bear to live, or dare to die.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

300. “Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but it impairs what it would improve.”

— Alexander Pope