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The search of our future being is but a needless, anxious, and haste to be knowing, sooner than we can, what, without all this solicitude, we shall know a little later.

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
Future
Needless
Littles
Haste
Little
Sooner
Without
Anxious
Search
Later
Shall
Knowing
Solicitude

More quotes by Alexander Pope

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Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day.
Alexander Pope
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What then remains, but well our power to use, And keep good-humor still whate'er we lose? And trust me, dear, good-humor can prevail, When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.
Alexander Pope
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Avoid Extremes and shun the fault of such Who still are pleas'd too little or too much.
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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Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.
Alexander Pope
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Let fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, so long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.
Alexander Pope
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By music minds an equal temper know, Nor swell too high, nor sink too low. . . . . Warriors she fires with animated sounds. Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds.
Alexander Pope
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Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.
Alexander Pope
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No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n, Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n But such plain roofs as Piety could raise, And only vocal with the Maker's praise.
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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There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead.
Alexander Pope
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Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Alexander Pope
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Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad.
Alexander Pope
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Some positive persisting fops we know, Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so But you with pleasure own your errors past, And make each day a critique on the last.
Alexander Pope
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Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend.
Alexander Pope
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Coffee which makes the politician wise, and see through all things with his half-shut eyes.
Alexander Pope
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Gentle dullness ever loves a joke.
Alexander Pope
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Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd and make the learned smile.
Alexander Pope
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To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake.
Alexander Pope
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Silence! coeval with eternity! thou wert ere Nature's self began to be thine was the sway ere heaven was formed on earth, ere fruitful thought conceived creation's birth.
Alexander Pope