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
fall vices vain
Tis all in vain to keep a constant pother About one vice and fall into another.
vices sometimes virtue
Sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed.
want vices virtue
Count all th' advantage prosperous Vice attains, 'Tis but what Virtue flies from and disdains: And grant the bad what happiness they would, One they must want--which is, to pass for good.
vices dignity virtue
Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost?
thinking vices strange
Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.
man plain reason
Why has not man a microscopic eye? For the plain reason man is not a fly.
last lay
Be not the first by which a new thing is tried, or the last to lay the old aside.
blessed expects man ninth shall
Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed" was the ninth beatitude
dream english-poet men
Men dream of courtship, but in wedlock wake.
hid laws lay nature newton
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
chaos curtain darkness dies dread great lets thy universal
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored; dies before thy uncreating word: thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; and universal darkness buries all.
age drunk fairly follies folly grace learn leave retirement sober trifle walk whom whose
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will; you played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill: walk sober off; before a sprightlier age comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage: leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.
birthday count grateful
PLeas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind, And count each birthday with a grateful mind.
madmen run saint self worst zeal
For virtue's self may too much zeal be had; the worst of madmen is a saint run mad.