Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Popewas an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verse, as well as for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 May 1688
errors judging world
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
fall pride errors
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.
dream errors seems
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream;
past errors needs
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.
birthday count grateful
PLeas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind, And count each birthday with a grateful mind.
cool crowd fan flourish shall turn
Where'er you walk, cool glades shall fan the glade / Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade: / Where'er you tread, the blusing flow'rs shall rise, / And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.
few vicious virtue virtuous
Virtuous and vicious everyone must be; few in extremes, but all in degree.
truth
And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade.
english-poet instead tempts wiser
Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.
english-poet faith life modes whose wrong
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
common education forms twig
'Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.
art chance ease easiest move true
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest.
english-poet last lay nor rule whom
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.