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Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Alexander Pope

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Alexander Pope
Age: 56 †
Born: 1688
Born: May 21
Died: 1744
Died: May 30
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More quotes by Alexander Pope

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Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will, And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.
Alexander Pope
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Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Alexander Pope
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Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of readier change.
Alexander Pope
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As some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Though oft the ear the open vowels tire While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.
Alexander Pope
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Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own because they resemble the Ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own, because they are like our Fathers: And indeed it is very unreasonable, that people should expect us to be Scholars, and yet be angry to find us so.
Alexander Pope
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All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye.
Alexander Pope
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Death, only death, can break the lasting chain And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain
Alexander Pope
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And each blasphemer quite escape the rod, Because the insult's not on man, but God?
Alexander Pope
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A man who admires a fine woman, has yet not more reason to wish himself her husband, than one who admired the Hesperian fruit, would have had to wish himself the dragon that kept it.
Alexander Pope
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Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment, too?
Alexander Pope
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I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.
Alexander Pope
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Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense.
Alexander Pope
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No more the mounting larks, while Daphne sings, Shall, list'ning, in mid-air suspend their wings.
Alexander Pope
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I am his Highness' dog at Kew Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Alexander Pope
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Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best.
Alexander Pope
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And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.
Alexander Pope
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In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies All quit their sphere and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Alexander Pope
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But thousands die without or this or that, Die, and endow a college or a cat.
Alexander Pope
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Where beams of imagination play, the memory's soft figures melt away.
Alexander Pope
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Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice - A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.
Alexander Pope