Alexander Pope Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. A little learning is a dang'rous thing;Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,And drinking largely sobers us again.Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,While from the bounded level of our mindShort views we take, nor see the lengths behind;But more advanc'd, behold with strange surpriseNew distant scenes of endless science rise!So pleas'd at first the towering Alps we try,Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,Th' eternal snows appear already past,And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;But, those attain'd, we tremble to surveyThe growing labours of the lengthen'd way,Th' increasing prospects tire our wand'ring eyes,Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! An Essay On Criticism

2. A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

3. If I am right, Thy grace impartStill in the right to stay;If I am wrong, O, teach my heartTo find that better way! Moral Essays

4. Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. The Rape of the Lock

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

6. Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. Essay on Man

7. Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest. The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come. An Essay on Man

8. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,The proper study of mankind is Man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;In doubt his mind or body to prefer;Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;Alike in ignorance, his reason such,Whether he thinks too little or too much;Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;Still by himself abused or disabused;Created half to rise, and half to fall;Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,Correct old time, and regulate the sun;Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,And quitting sense call imitating God;As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,And turn their heads to imitate the sun.Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—Then drop into thyself, and be a fool! An Essay on Man

9. Knowledge of the world is as irrelevant in art as it is in a love affair.

10. Music resembles poetry, in eachAre nameless graces which no methods teach,And which a master hand alone can reach. An Essay On Criticism

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

12. Order is heaven's first law. An Essay on Man

13. Remembrance and reflection how allied!What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide! Essay on Man and Other Poems

14. SolitudeHappy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire; Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter fire. Blest, who can unconcern’dly find Hours, days, and years, slide soft away In health of body, peace of mind, Quiet by day. Sound sleep by night; study and ease Together mix’d, sweet recreation, And innocence, which most does please With meditation. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

15. Some who grow dull religious straight commenceAnd gain in morals what they lose in sense. Minor Poems

16. The Wit of Cheats, the Courage of a Whore,Are what ten thousand envy and adore:All, all look up, with reverential Awe,At crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the Law:While Truth, Worth, Wisdom, daily they decry-`'Nothing is sacred now but Villainy'- Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I

17. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;Thus unlamented let me die;Steal from the world, and not a stoneTell where I lie. Poems Collected

18. To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,To raise the genius, and to mend the heart

19. True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'dWhat oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,That gives us back the image of our mind.As shades more sweetly recommend the light,So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. An Essay On Criticism

20. Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please,With too much spirit to be e'er at ease,With too much quickness ever to be taught,With too much thinking to have common thought:You purchase pain with all that joy can give,And die of nothing but a rage to live. Moral Essays