Top 500 Alexander Pope Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “But see how oft ambition’s aims are cross’d, and chiefs contend ’til all the prize is lost!”

— Alexander Pope

402. “Passions are the gales of life.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

405. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

407. “Some positive persisting fops we know, Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so; But you with pleasure own your errors past, And make each day a critique on the last.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

421. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

423. “Better to jump in the water and learn to swim than stand on the shore wondering.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

428. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

430. “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

431. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

433. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

439. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

441. “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

442. “Genius creates, and taste preserves.”

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

445. “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

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

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

— Alexander Pope

450. “There is nothing meritorious but virtue and friendship.”

— Alexander Pope