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When to mischief mortals bend their will, how soon they find it instruments of ill.

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
Find
Bend
Mischief
Mortals
Ill
Instruments
Soon

More quotes by 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
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Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows.
Alexander Pope
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If faith itself has different dresses worn, What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?
Alexander Pope
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Great oaks grow from little acorns. He has a green thumb. He has green fingers. He's sowing his wild oats. Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand, And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand.
Alexander Pope
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All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers hushed are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers.
Alexander Pope
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The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd
Alexander Pope
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Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n.
Alexander Pope
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Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.
Alexander Pope
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He knows to live who keeps the middle state, and neither leans on this side nor on that.
Alexander Pope
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Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I'll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!
Alexander Pope
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But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.
Alexander Pope
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Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.
Alexander Pope
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Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.
Alexander Pope
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Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
Alexander Pope
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How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine.
Alexander Pope
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Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
Alexander Pope
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There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.
Alexander Pope
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Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.
Alexander Pope
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Of darkness visible so much be lent, as half to show, half veil, the deep intent.
Alexander Pope
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Beauty draws us with a single hair.
Alexander Pope