Top 500 Alexander Pope Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “What will a child learn sooner than a song?”

— Alexander Pope

402. “Who dies in youth and vigour, dies the best.”

— Alexander Pope

403. “The young disease, that must subdue at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.”

— Alexander Pope

404. “The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong.”

— Alexander Pope

405. “Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.”

— Alexander Pope

406. “Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost?”

— Alexander Pope

407. “Some place the bliss in action, some in ease, Those call it pleasure, and contentment these.”

— Alexander Pope

408. “Passions are the gales of life.”

— Alexander Pope

409. “We may see the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them to.”

— Alexander Pope

410. “The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom of playing the fool.”

— Alexander Pope

411. “Atheists put on false courage and alacrity in the midst of their darkness and apprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing for fear.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

413. “But see how oft ambition’s aims are cross’d, and chiefs contend ’til all the prize is lost!”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

415. “Truth needs not flowers of speech.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

417. “Tis use alone that sanctifies expense And splendor borrow all her rays from sense.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

420. “A fly, a grape-stone, or a hair can kill.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

422. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

424. “Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

430. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

433. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

436. “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

437. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

440. “Genius creates, and taste preserves.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— Alexander Pope

445. “Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.”

— Alexander Pope

446. “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

447. “Let Joy or Ease, let Affluence or Content, And the gay Conscience of a life well spent, Calm ev’ry thought, inspirit ev’ry grace, Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face.”

— Alexander Pope

448. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope