"By labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die."

"A poet soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him."

"Where the bright seraphim in burning row Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow."

"Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy,"

"O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warbl'st at eve, when all the woods are still."

"Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race: Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours, Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace; And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, Which is no more than what is false and vain, And merely mortal dross."

"Under the shady roof Of branching elm star-proof."

"Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie."

"The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground."

"Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms, Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, If ever deed of honour did thee please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms."

"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!"

"And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."

"What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in pilèd stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?"

"For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed; And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walked the waves."

"Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth."

"Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world."

"Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honied showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears."

"Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook."

"To those who know thee not, no words can paint! And those who know thee, know all words are faint!"

"... There's a joy, To the fond votaries of fame unknown, To hear the still small voice of conscience speak In whisp'ring plaudit to the silent soul."

"A crown! what is it?"

"The keen spirit Seizes the prompt occasion, makes the thought Start into instant action, and at once Plans and performs, resolves and executes!"

"Hannah More was one of the last of the group of learned ladies who had known Johnson, though Madame d'Arblay survived her for some years. Her writings have the old-fashioned flavour of the eighteenth century; while they now represent the teaching of the evangelical school, which looked up to Newton and Cecil, and of which William Wilberforce and his friends were the recognised political and social leaders. Though now out of fashion, they show not only high moral and religious purpose, but strong sense, as well as considerable intellectual vivacity. If their author showed a little self-complacency, the wonder is that her strong sense kept her from being spoilt by the uniform flattery poured upon her by her contemporaries. Her services to education at a time of general indifference deserve the highest praise, though her decided desire to keep the poor in their place is now out of fashion. In private life she seems to have been thoroughly amiable, kind to children, and as playful as her conscience would allow."

"That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself, who says, there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it."

"Small habits well pursued betimes May reach the dignity of crimes."

"In men this blunder still you find,— All think their little set mankind."

"Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs."

"Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise."

"The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole Can never be a mouse of any soul."

"They dream in Courtship, but in Wedlock wake."

"A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain, And drinking largely sobers us again."

"'Tis fixed, the irrevocable doom of Jove; No force can bend me, no persuasion move."

"Happy the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground."

"Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie."

"As far as Pope goes, he succeeds; but his Homer is not Homer, but Pope."

"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope."

"Of all his works he was most proud of his garden."

"He is in my opinion the most elegant, the most correct poet; and at the same time the most harmonious...that England ever gave birth to."

"In Pope, I cannot read a line, But with a sigh, I wish it mine: When he can in one couplet fix More sense than I can do in six: It gives me such a jealous fit, I cry, Pox take him, and his wit."

"The verses, when they were written, resemble nothing so much as spoonfuls of boiling oil, ladled out by a fiendish monkey at an upstairs window upon such passers-by whom the wretch had a grudge against."

"I have entered into these particulars with respect to the Essay on Man, partly with a view of illustrating the distinction already hinted at between the two different forms in which the system of optimism has been proposed, and partly to have an opportunity of directing the attention of my readers to the noblest specimen of philosophical poetry which our language affords; and which, with the exception of a very few passages, contains a valuable summary of all that human reason has been able hitherto to advance in justification of the moral government of God."

"Pope has done this so well that you cannot do it better; and if you mean this as a burlesque, you had better suppress it, for you cannot parody Pope unless you can write better verse than Pope—and you can't."

"Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the qualities that constitute genius. He had Invention, by which new trains of events are formed and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in The Rape of the Lock, and by which extrinsick and adventitious embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject, as in the Essay on Criticism; he had Imagination, which strongly impresses on the writer's mind and enables him to convey to the reader the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of passion, as in his Eloisa, Windsor Forest, and the Ethick Epistles; he had Judgement, which selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and, by separating the essence of things from its concomitants, often makes the representation more powerful than the reality; and he had colours of language always before him ready to decorate his matter with every grace of elegant expression, as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful multiplicity of Homer's sentiments and descriptions."

"Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but dared the judgement of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from others, he shewed none to himself. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven."

"Pope was not a classic of prose; he wrote almost exclusively in a highly finished artistic verse, which may evade the romantic formulas, but is either poetry or nothing."

"The Messiah (of 1712) reached a pitch of polished, resonant rhetoric hitherto undreamed of, and was a "copy of verses" which became the model and the despair of five generations of poets."

"The Rape of the Lock (1712–14) lifted Pope at once to the first rank of living European poets. In lightness of handling, in elegance of badinage, in exquisite amenity of style—that is to say, in the very qualities which Latin Europe had hitherto, and not without justice, denied us—the little British barbarian surpassed all foreign competitors. This is the turning-point of English subserviency to French taste. Pope and his school had closely studied their Boileau, and had learned their lesson well, so well that for the future England is no longer the ape of the French, but is competent, more and more confidently as the century descends, to give examples to the polite world."

"For more than thirty years Pope was so completely the centre of poetical attention in England that he may almost be said to have comprised the poetry of his time. There is no second instance of an English poet preserving for so long a period a supremacy comparable to his. It is possible to defend the position that one or two other versemen of the age did some particular thing better than Pope, though even this requires argument; but it is quite certain that he alone excelled over a wide range of subjects."

"Who is this Pope that I hear so much about? I cannot discover what is his merit. Why will not my subjects write in prose?"

"The little gentleman ... with a most comical and unparalleled assurance, has undertaken to translate Homer from Greek, of which he does not know one word, into English, which he understands almost as little."