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.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

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

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

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

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

Woman's at best a contradiction still.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

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

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

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

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

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

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

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

Health consists with temperance alone.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

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

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

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

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

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

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

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

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

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

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.

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

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

An honest man's the noblest work of God.

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

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

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

To err is human to forgive, divine.