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
censure ten writers-and-writing writes
Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.
catch flying last lips suck
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,/ Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!
draw peculiar plan
Fix'd like a plan on his peculiar spot, to draw nutrition, propagate, and rot.
ashamed english-poet man saying today wiser words
A man should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
ashamed man today wiser
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
dear gold grow rust
Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old:It is the rust we value, not the gold.
dear gold grow rust
Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old: It is the rust we value, not the gold.
dangerous drink drinking knowledge largely learning shallow taste
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain; And drinking largely sobers us again.
excuse worse
An excuse is worse than a lie, for an excuse is a lie, guarded.
truth
And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade.
english-poet instead tempts wiser
Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.
english-poet faith life modes whose wrong
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
common education forms twig
'Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.
art chance ease easiest move true
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.