Bird Quotes by Alexander Pope

13 Bird quotes by Alexander Pope

Pope's sharp pen catches the flutter of feathers and the folly of men alike. In these thirteen snippets, his characteristic irony and polished rhythm take wing.

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All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers; hushed are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers.

Alexander Pope

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Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.

Alexander Pope

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For critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural inclination to carrion.

Alexander Pope

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Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,…

Alexander Pope

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See! From the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings; Short is his joy! He feels the fiery…

Alexander Pope

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It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that…

Alexander Pope

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Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring, Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing, Ye trees that fade, when…

Alexander Pope

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Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove? Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings?…

Alexander Pope

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Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; Learn from the beasts the physic of the field; The arts of building…

Alexander Pope

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Let sinful bachelors their woes deplore; full well they merit all they feel, and more: unaw by precepts, human or divine, like…

Alexander Pope

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Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamtrous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their…

Alexander Pope

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[T]hro this Air, this Ocean, and this Earth, All Nature quick, and bursting into birth. Above, how high progressive life may go?…

Alexander Pope

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Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly, When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky; Not half so swiftly the…

Alexander Pope

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More by Alexander Pope

How do we know that we have a right to kill creatures that we are so little above, as dogs, for our curiosity or…

Alexander Pope

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To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue…

Alexander Pope

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A mighty maze! But not without a plan.

Alexander Pope

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Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.

Alexander Pope

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For I, who hold sage Homer's rule the best, Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.

Alexander Pope

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Like following life through creatures you dissect, You lose it in the moment you detect.

Alexander Pope

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When two people compliment each other with the choice of anything, each of them generally gets that which he likes least.

Alexander Pope

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Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd and make the learned smile.

Alexander Pope

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Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Alexander Pope

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She went from opera, park, assembly, play, To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day. To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea,…

Alexander Pope

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I am satisfied to trifle away my time, rather than let it stick by me.

Alexander Pope

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The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom of playing the…

Alexander Pope

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Then say not Man's imperfect,Heav'n in fault; Say rather, Man's as perfect ashe ought:

Alexander Pope

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First follow Nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchanged,…

Alexander Pope

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Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Alexander Pope

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