Alexander Pope was a poet and satirist of the Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents. Considered the foremost English poet of the early 18th century and a master of the heroic couplet, he is best known for satirical and discursive poetry, including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, he is the second-most quoted author in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses have entered common parlance (e. g., damning with faint praise). These Alexander Pope quotes will motivate you.
Best Alexander Pope Quotes
- “No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents, or my own?” ~ Alexander Pope
- “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “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
- “Truth needs not flowers of speech.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Act well your part, there all the honour lies.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each prayer accepted, and each wish resign’d” ~ Alexander Pope
- “As with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring out.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Love the offender, yet detest the offense.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?” ~ Alexander Pope
- “You purchase pain with all that joy can give and die of nothing but a rage to live.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Every professional was once an amateur.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Physicians are in general the most amiable companions and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “What some call health if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“He who serves his brother best gets nearer God than all the rest.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye that habitually compares everything to something better. But by changing that habit to comparing everything to something worse, even making it a game, that person can find gratitude, relief and happiness wherever they go and whatever they experience, guaranteed!” ~ Alexander Pope
- “The laughers are a majority.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Men must be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown proposed as things forgot.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Get your enemy to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you.” ~ Alexander Pope quotes
- “There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men; that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Eve left Adam, to meet the Devil in private.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink of it deeply, or taste it not, for shallow thoughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking deeply sobers us again.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “True wit is nature to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.” ~ Alexander Pope - “This but a part we see, and not a whole.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “We may see the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them to.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “All seems infected that the infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.” ~ Alexander Pope - “Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “What is it to be wise?
‘Tis but to know how little can be known,
To see all others’ faults, and feel our own.” ~ Alexander Pope - “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “In faith and hope the world will disagree, but all mankind’s concern is charity.” ~ Alexander Pope
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“Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “With sharpened sight pale Antiquaries pore, Th’ inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears; The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is PRIDE, the never-failing vice of fools.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “What then remains, but well our power to use,
And keep good-humor still whate’er we lose?
And trust me, dear, good-humor can prevail,
When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.” ~ Alexander Pope -
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “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 - “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
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“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “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
- “Act well your part, there all the honour lies.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.” ~ Alexander Pope
- “Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.” ~ Alexander Pope
