Top 500 Alexander Pope Quotes (2023 Update)
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401. “See plastic Nature working to this end, The single atoms each to other tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Form’d and impell’d its neighbor to embrace.”

— Alexander Pope

402. “Intestine war no more our passions wage, And giddy factions bear away their rage.”

— Alexander Pope

403. “True disputants are like true sportsmen: their whole delight is in the pursuit.”

— Alexander Pope

404. “Whenever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generosity if he were a rich man.”

— Alexander Pope

405. “Those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.”

— Alexander Pope

406. “Fix’d like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate and rot.”

— Alexander Pope

407. “It is sure the hardest science to forget!”

— Alexander Pope

408. “And little eagles wave their wings in gold.”

— Alexander Pope

409. “All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers; hushed are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers.”

— Alexander Pope

410. “Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?”

— Alexander Pope

411. “Men would be angels, angels would be gods.”

— Alexander Pope

412. “Search then the ruling passion: This clue, once found, unravels all the rest.”

— Alexander Pope

413. “Fool, ’tis in vain from wit to wit to roam: Know, sense, like charity, begins at home.”

— Alexander Pope

414. “E’en Sunday shines no Sabbath day to me.”

— Alexander Pope

415. “Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or a quick conception and an easy delivery.”

— Alexander Pope

416. “In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From pois’nous herbs extracts the healing dew?”

— Alexander Pope

417. “With too much quickness ever to be taught; With too much thinking to have common thought.”

— Alexander Pope

418. “To Him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all!”

— Alexander Pope

419. “A long, exact, and serious comedy; In every scene some moral let it teach, And, if it can, at once both please and preach.”

— Alexander Pope

420. “Our grandsire, Adam, ere of Eve possesst, Alone, and e’en in Paradise unblest, With mournful looks the blissful scenes survey’d, And wander’d in the solitary shade. The Maker say, took pity, and bestow’d Woman, the last, the best reserv’d of God.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

422. “And binding nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.”

— Alexander Pope

423. “The approach of night The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deck’d the glade, And the low sun had lengthen’d ev’ry shade.”

— Alexander Pope

424. “Art still followed where Rome’s eagles flew.”

— Alexander Pope

425. “If a man’s character is to be abused there’s nobody like a relative to do the business.”

— Alexander Pope

426. “Genius creates, and taste preserves.”

— Alexander Pope

427. “Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day.”

— Alexander Pope

428. “Heav’n first taught letters for some wretch’s aid, Some banish’d lover, or some captive maid.”

— Alexander Pope

429. “Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of expiring victims or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there.”

— Alexander Pope

430. “Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.”

— Alexander Pope

431. “Praise from a friend, or censure from a foe, Are lost on hearers that our merits know.”

— Alexander Pope

432. “Praise is like ambergrease: a little whiff of it, and by snatches, is very agreeable; but when a man holds a whole lump of it to your nose, it is a stink, and strikes you down.”

— Alexander Pope

433. “Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off’rings, and a thankful strain.”

— Alexander Pope

434. “Wit and judgment often are at strife.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

436. “What will a child learn sooner than a song?”

— Alexander Pope

437. “Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamtrous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare They fall, and leave their little lives in air.”

— Alexander Pope

438. “In a sadly pleasing strain, let the warbling lute complain.”

— Alexander Pope

439. “It is not so much the being exempt from faults, as having overcome them, that is an advantage to us.”

— Alexander Pope

440. “The enormous faith of many made for one.”

— Alexander Pope

441. “So upright Quakers please both man and God.”

— Alexander Pope

442. “The race by vigour, not by vaunts, is won.”

— Alexander Pope

443. “The season when to come, and when to go, to sing, or cease to sing, we never know.”

— Alexander Pope

444. “Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes; And when in act they cease, in prospect rise.”

— Alexander Pope

445. “If faith itself has different dresses worn, What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?”

— Alexander Pope

446. “A good-natured man has the whole world to be happy out of.”

— Alexander Pope

447. “So modern ’pothecaries, taught the art By doctor’s bills to play the doctor’s part, Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.”

— Alexander Pope

448. “Modest plainness sets off sprightly wit, For works may have more with than does ’em good, As bodies perish through excess of blood.”

— Alexander Pope

449. “Such as are still observing upon others are like those who are always abroad at other men’s houses, reforming everything there while their own runs to ruin.”

— Alexander Pope

450. “Calm, thinking villains, whom no faith could fix, Of crooked counsels and dark politics.”

— Alexander Pope