"Lo these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd, And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield. Thus unlamented pass the proud away, The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day! So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow For others' good, or melt at others' woe."

"On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates."

"Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods."

"Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender, or too firm a heart, To act a lover's or a Roman's part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky, For those who greatly think, or bravely die?"

"What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?"

"I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts."

"Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own because they resemble the Ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own, because they are like our Fathers: And indeed it is very unreasonable, that people should expect us to be Scholars, and yet be angry to find us so."

"I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken."

"Ignobly vain, and impotently great."

"A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, And greatly falling with a falling state. While Cato gives his little senate laws, What bosom beats not in his country's cause?"

"To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage."

"From old Belerium to the northern main."

"Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clam'rous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare, They fall, and leave their little lives in air."

"Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began A mighty hunter, and his prey was man."

"Not chaos-like together crush'd and bruis'd, But as the world, harmoniously confus'd, Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree."

"Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain, Here earth and water seem to strive again, Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised, But, as the world, harmoniously confused: Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree."

"The world recedes; it disappears! Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears With sounds seraphic ring! Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?"

"Tell me, my soul, can this be death?"

"Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister spirit, come away!"

"Vital spark of heav'nly flame! Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!"

"Unblemish'd let me live, or die unknown; O grant an honest fame, or grant me none!"

"Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call; She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all."

"The flying Rumours gather'd as they roll'd, Scarce any Tale was sooner heard than told; And all who told it, added something new, And all who heard it, made Enlargements too, In ev'ry Ear it spread, on ev'ry Tongue it grew."

"There various news I heard of love and strife, Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life, Of loss and gain, of famine and of store, Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore, Of prodigies, and portents seen in air, Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair, Of turns of fortune, changes in the state, The fall of favourites, projects of the great, Of aid mismanagements, taxations new: All neither wholly false, nor wholly true."

"To err is human, to forgive divine."

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance."

"The garlands fade, the vows are worn away; So dies her love, and so my hopes decay."

"Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn, And liquid amber drop from every thorn."

"Say, is not absence death to those who love?"

"Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade, Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade: Where'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your eyes."

"Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms."

"Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy."

"Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! They had no poet, and they died. In vain they schem'd, in vain they bled! They had no poet, and are dead."

"The Iliad took me up six years, and during that time, and particularly the first part of it, I was often under great pain and apprehensions. Though I conquered the thoughts of it in the day, they would frighten me in the night. I dreamed often of being engaged in a long journey, and that I should never get to the end of it. This made so strong an impression upon me, that I sometimes dream of it still; of being engaged in that translation, of having got about half way through it, and being embarrassed, and under dread of never completing it."

"Let such, such only tread this sacred floor, Who dare to love their country and be poor."

"There, take (says Justice), take ye each a shell: We thrive at Westminster on fools like you; 'T was a fat oyster,—live in peace,—adieu."

"What terrible moments does one feel after one has engaged for a large work! In the beginning of my translating the Iliad, I wished any body would hang me a hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first, that I often used to dream of it; and do so sometimes still. When I fell into the method of translating 30 or 40 verses before I got up, and piddled with it the rest of the morning, it went on easily enough; and when I was thoroughly got into the way of it, I did the rest with pleasure."

"I have nothing to say for rhyme, but that I doubt whether a poem can support itself without it, in our language; unless it be stiffened with such strange words, as are likely to destroy our language itself."

"For he lives twice who can at once employ The present well, and e'en the past enjoy."

"The famous Lord Hallifax (though so much talked of) was rather a pretender to taste, than really possessed of it.—When I had finished the two or three first books of my translation of the Iliad, that lord, "desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house." Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there at the reading.—In four or five places, Lord Hallifax stopped me very civilly; and with a speech, each time of much the same kind: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me.—Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a little at your leisure.—I am sure you can give it a little turn."—I returned from Lord Hallifax's with Dr. Garth, in his chariot; and as we were going along, was saying to the doctor, that my lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty, by such loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it was that offended his lordship in either of them.—Garth laughed heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long enough acquainted with Lord Hallifax, to know his way yet: that I need not puzzle myself in looking those places over and over when I got home. "All you need do, (said he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Hallifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those passages; and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."—I followed his advice; waited on Lord Hallifax some time after: said, I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed[;] read them to him exactly as they were at first; and his lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, "Ay now, Mr. Pope, they are perfectly right! nothing can be better.""

"The night with sudden odour reeled; The southern stars a music pealed."

"The news came to the village — the dire news which spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation — that Byron was dead. Tennyson was then about a boy of fifteen."Byron was dead! I thought the whole world was at an end," he once said, speaking of those bygone days. "I thought everything was over and finished for everyone — that nothing else mattered. I remembered I walked out alone, and carved 'Byron is dead' into the sandstone.""

"Should Heaven send me any son, I hope he's not like Tennyson. I'd rather have him play a fiddle Than rise and bow and speak an idyll."

"I don't suppose and his Cornish were as gentlemanly as Malorye made them, much less as genteel as Tennyson's heroes, epic shopwalkers in a well-decorated emporium of ."

"Tennyson knew his magician's business."

"[A]nswers to questions about ethical meaning cannot come from science. Tennyson... knew that the "good life"... required their successful integration. Tennyson called these two sources knowledge and reverence, personified as mind and soul. And he spoke of their union..."Let knowledge grow from more to more But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music, as before.""

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die"

"The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions."

"Robin: No man who truly loves and truly rules His following but can keep his followers true. I am one with mine. Traitors are rarely bred Save under traitor kings."

"Forget thee… Never— Till Nature, high and low, and great and small Forgets herself, and all her loves and hates Sink again into Chaos."