Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Alexander Pope Poet

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: England
  • Born: May 21, 1688
  • Died: May 30, 1744

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson.

A little learning is a dangerous thing Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

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

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read With loads of learned lumber in his head.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

The learned is happy, nature to explore The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

Never was it given to mortal man - To lie so boldly as we women can.

To err is human to forgive, divine.

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce In man they join to some mysterious use.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan The proper study of mankind is man.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

One science only will one genius fit so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

Health consists with temperance alone.

'Tis education forms the common mind just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

The most positive men are the most credulous.

Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

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

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

For Forms of Government let fools contest whatever is best administered is best.

Party-spirit at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

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

An honest man's the noblest work of God.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance.

Woman's at best a contradiction still.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.