Alexander Pope

"Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples."

"Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon."

"The most positive men are the most credulous..."

"To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves."

"Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few."

"Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."

"Father of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!"

"Thou Great First Cause, least understood Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good And that myself am blind."

"And binding Nature fast in fate, Left free the human will."

"Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume Thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land On each I judge Thy foe."

"If I am right, Thy grace import Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, oh teach my heart To find that better way!"

"Teach me to feel another's woe, To right the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me."

"Passions...are the gales of life..."

"This is the Jew That Shakespeare drew."

"True politeness consists in the being easy one-self, and making every body about one as easy as we can."

"A god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature."

"A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left."

"Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly."

"You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come; Knock as you please, there's nobody at home."

"Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain. Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise! Each stamps its image as the other flies!"

"Never find fault with the absent."

"The hidden harmony is better than the obvious."

"The sick in body call for aid: the sick In mind are covetous of more disease; And when at worst, they dream themselves quite well. To know ourselves diseased, is half our cure."

"What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease."

"We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious founder, Pope as the splendid high-priest, of our age of prose and reason, of our excellent and indispensable eighteenth century. For the purposes of their mission and destiny their poetry, like their prose, is admirable... Though they may write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be masters of the art of versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are classics of our prose."

"The most beautiful of poets."

"I look upon a proper appreciation of Pope as a touchstone of taste."

"This beautiful passage [The Rape of the Lock, Canto 5, lines 25-32], from the most beautiful of poets, which ought to be fastened in large print upon every lady's dressing table, the American women, of all ranks, seem to have by heart."

"The Iliad and the Odyssey, in his hands, have no more the air of antiquity than if he had himself invented them."

"A young, squab, short gentleman, whose outward form, though it should be that of downright monkey, would not differ so much from human shape as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding. ... As there is no creature in nature so venomous, there is nothing so stupid and so impotent as a hunch-back'd toad. ... This little author may extol the ancients as much and as long as he pleases, but he has reason to thank the good gods that he was born a modern. For had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his poems,—the life of half a day."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"A friend is best found in adversity."

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

"Zwei Dinge sind gleicherweise für den Verstand unerklärlich und kein Gegenstand, über den man nachdenken soll: die Weisheit Gottes und der Wahnwitz der Menschen."

"Zornig sein heißt, den Fehler anderer an sich selbst rächen."

"Sei nicht der Erste, Neues zu erfassen, der Letzte nicht, das Alte gehn zu lassen."

"Partei ist der Wahnsinn der Vielen zum Vorteil von Wenigen."

"Mit jedem Wort stirbt ein guter Ruf."

"Lasst Toren streiten, welche Verfassung die beste sei! Wo am besten regiert wird, dort ist die Verfassung die beste."

"irren ist menschlich, aber vergeben göttlich."

"Der Teufel ist jetzt weiser als vordem, er macht uns reich, nicht arm, uns zu versuchen."

"Natur, Naturgesetze im Dunkeln sah man nicht; // Gott sprach: Es werde Newton! Und es ward Licht."

"Ein wenig Wissenschaft, ein wenig Gelehrsamkeit", ruft uns Pope zu, "ist eine gefährliche Sache. Schöpft tief, oder kostet den Pierischen Quell gar nicht. Ein seichter Trunk berauscht das Gehirn; aber volle Züge machen wieder nüchtern."