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Life Quotes by Alexander Pope

56 Life quotes by Alexander Pope

All Life quotes Alexander Pope’s page

Pope warns that trying to dissect life can make it slip away like a fleeting shadow. He suggests following nature’s steady standards instead of chasing fame or ambition. He also describes passions as powerful winds that shape our thoughts and actions.

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What is fame? a fancied life in others' breath.

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Curse on all laws but those which love has made.

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This long disease, my life.

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Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm.

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How vast a memory has Love!

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Passions are the gales of life.

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Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

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Placed on this isthmus of a middle state.

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For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight; his can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

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The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life.

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

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What's fame? a fancy'd life in other's breath. A thing beyond us, even before our death.

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I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.

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Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return.

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Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep, Who lost my heart while I preserv'd my sheep.

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The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

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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…

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Let Joy or Ease, let Affluence or Content, And the gay Conscience of a life well spent, Calm ev'ry thought, inspirit ev'ry…

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“Oh let me live my own! and die so too! ("To live and die is all I have to do:") Maintain a…

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Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate, Born where Heav'n influence scarce can penetrate. In life's low vale, the soil the virtues…

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The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, forever, and forever! Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,…

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Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender or too firm a heart, To act a…

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On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale; Nor God alone in the still calm…

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“Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest. The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,…

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See how the World its Veterans rewards! A Youth of Frolics, an old Age of Cards; Fair to no purpose, artful to…

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At present we can only reason of the divine justice from what we know of justice in man. When we are in…

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Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,…

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Tis from high Life high Characters are drawn; A Saint in Crape is twice a Saint in Lawn: A Judge is just,…

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What so pure, which envious tongues will spare? Some wicked wits have libell'd all the fair, With matchless impudence they style a…

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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…

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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…

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For forms of government let fools contest; Whate'er is best administer'd is best. For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His…

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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?…

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A king is a mortal god on earth, unto whom the living God hath lent his own name as a great honour;…

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Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?

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In death a hero, as in life a friend!

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The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth.

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The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

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Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate and rot.

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For he lives twice who can at once employ, The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.

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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…

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

A mighty maze! But not without a plan.

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

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

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

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

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

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

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

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

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

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

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

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