Alexander Pope Quotes

Alexander Pope is famous for "An Essay on Criticism." He was a critic, essayist, satirist, and one of the greatest poets of the Enlightenment. Pope is a popular figure for study in literary history. Here are a few quotes from Alexander Pope.

• "All seems infected that the infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye."
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• "Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad."
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• "Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul."
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• "Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw."
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• "Good sense which only is the gift of Heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven."
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• "He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one."
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• "Honour and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honour lies."
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• "If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business."
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• "If, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great."
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• "If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
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• "Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel."
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• "Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought."
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• "Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run amuck and tilt at all I meet."
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• "Such laboured nothings in so strange a style, Amaze the unlearned, and make the learned smile."
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• "Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss."
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• "There goes a saying, and 'twas shrewdly said, 'Old fish at table, but young flesh in bed.'"
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• "True, conscious honour is to feel no sin, he's armed without that's innocent within; be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass."
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• "Who know but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind."
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• "Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?"
  - Alexander Pope