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The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.

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
Faults
Discovers
Bottom
Transparency
Prove
Stream
Water
Dirt
Best
Showing
Mind
Streams
Way
Purity
Convinces
Convince
Clearness

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The enormous faith of many made for one.
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Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
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Who dare to love their country, and be poor.
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To balance Fortune by a just expense, Join with Economy, Magnificence.
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A perfect woman's but a softer man.
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Of little use, the man you may suppose, Who says in verse what others say in prose Yet let me show a poet's of some weight, And (though no soldier) useful to the state, What will a child learn sooner than a song? What better teach a foreigner the tongue? What's long or short, each accent where to place And speak in public with some sort of grace?
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Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
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Nor in the critic let the man be lost.
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The heart resolves this matter in a trice, Men only feel the smart, but not the vice.
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At present we can only reason of the divine justice from what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes, we may have truer and nobler ideas of it but while we are in this life, we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.
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What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy, The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy, Is virtue's prize.
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But see how oft ambition's aims are cross'd, and chiefs contend 'til all the prize is lost!
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Love the offender, yet detest the offense.
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And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.
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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.
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Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
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Heaven breathes thro' ev'ry member of the whole One common blessing, as one common soul.
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Let sinful bachelors their woes deplore full well they merit all they feel, and more: unaw by precepts, human or divine, like birds and beasts, promiscuously they join.
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What is fame? a fancied life in others' breath.
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Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whose use? Pride answers, 'Tis for mine For me kind nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower.
Alexander Pope