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Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.

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
Much
Every
Men
Vanity
Wants
Understanding

More quotes by Alexander Pope

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Who combats bravely is not therefore brave, He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave: Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise,- His pride in reasoning, not in acting lies.
Alexander Pope
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Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn, And liquid amber drop from every thorn.
Alexander Pope
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Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
Alexander Pope
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Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words,-health, peace, and competence.
Alexander Pope
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Only music has the ability to take you to the edge of reality and allow you to peek in for a moment.
Alexander Pope
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Search then the ruling passion: This clue, once found, unravels all the rest.
Alexander Pope
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If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.
Alexander Pope
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But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?
Alexander Pope
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Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
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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And not a vanity is given in vain.
Alexander Pope
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Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great... He hangs between in doubt to act or rest In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast In doubt his mind or body to prefer Born to die, and reasoning but to err.
Alexander Pope
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Fool, 'tis in vain from wit to wit to roam: Know, sense, like charity, begins at home.
Alexander Pope
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Intestine war no more our passions wage, And giddy factions bear away their rage.
Alexander Pope
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It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.
Alexander Pope
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With sharpen'd sight pale Antiquaries pore, Th' inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.
Alexander Pope
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I am satisfied to trifle away my time, rather than let it stick by me.
Alexander Pope
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And you, my Critics! in the chequer'd shade, Admire new light thro' holes yourselves have made.
Alexander Pope
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Judges and senates have been bought for gold Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Alexander Pope
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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?
Alexander Pope