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If, presume not to God to scan The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great.

Alexander Pope

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Alexander Pope
Age: 56 †
Born: 1688
Born: May 21
Died: 1744
Died: May 30
Literary Historian
Poet
Translator
the City
Pope the Poet
Alexander I Pope
Alexander
I Pope
States
Presume
Great
Proper
Men
God
Mankind
Isthmus
Wise
Rudely
Study
Darkly
Middle
Scan
State
Sceptic

More quotes by Alexander Pope

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The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.
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To err is human to forgive, divine.
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On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.
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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 clear, unchanged, and universal light, Life, force, and beauty must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Alexander Pope
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Praise from a friend, or censure from a foe, Are lost on hearers that our merits know.
Alexander Pope
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Heaven breathes thro' ev'ry member of the whole One common blessing, as one common soul.
Alexander Pope
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'Tis not enough your counsel still be true Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
Alexander Pope
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In vain sedate reflections we would make When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.
Alexander Pope
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To teach vain Wits that Science little known, T' admire Superior Sense, and doubt their own!
Alexander Pope
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Who know but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind.
Alexander Pope
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Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
Alexander Pope
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To buy books as some do who make no use of them, only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because they were made by some famous tailor.
Alexander Pope
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On wrongs swift vengeance waits.
Alexander Pope
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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.
Alexander Pope
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Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove? Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings? Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
Alexander Pope
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Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.
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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Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow The rest is all but leather and prunello.
Alexander Pope
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All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. [and therefore the solution is to fix the jaundiced eye.]
Alexander Pope
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I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures.
Alexander Pope