Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Popewas an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verse, as well as for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 May 1688
men wife aids
For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
art jewels grace
Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.
art soul slides
Still follow sense, of ev'ry art the soul, Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole.
smart littles fool
No creature smarts so little as a fool.
giving tree liberty
Give me again my hollow tree A crust of bread, and liberty!
self giving advice
Giving advice is many times only the privilege of saying a foolish thing one's self, under the pretense of hindering another from doing one.
art pain hate
Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain, These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd Make and maintain the balance of the mind.
believe forgiving lines
I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.
future tyrants hell
In adamantine chains shall Death be bound, And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
wife long ease
The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life.
profession
Every professional was once an amateur.
errors judging world
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
passion masters breasts
And hence one master-passion in the breast, Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.
rose liquid amber
Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn, And liquid amber drop from every thorn.