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Modest plainness sets off sprightly wit, For works may have more with than does 'em good, As bodies perish through excess of blood.

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
Good
Wit
Sets
Bodies
Sprightly
Works
Plainness
Blood
Perish
Doe
Ems
Body
Modest
May
Excess

More quotes by Alexander Pope

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Judge not of actions by their mere effect Dive to the center, and the cause detect. Great deeds from meanest springs may take their course, And smallest virtues from a mighty source.
Alexander Pope
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Good-humor only teaches charms to last, Still makes new conquests and maintains the past.
Alexander Pope
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Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
Alexander Pope
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Gentle dullness ever loves a joke.
Alexander Pope
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On wrongs swift vengeance waits.
Alexander Pope
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Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?
Alexander Pope
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Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.
Alexander Pope
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The villain's censure is extorted praise.
Alexander Pope
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So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
Alexander Pope
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Cursed be the verse, how well so e'er it flow, That tends to make one worthy man my foe.
Alexander Pope
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Why did I write? whose sin to me unknown Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
Alexander Pope
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For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight his can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
Alexander Pope
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'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all.
Alexander Pope
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For critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural inclination to carrion.
Alexander Pope
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Sleep and death, two twins of winged race, Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace.
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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Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul Reason's comparing balance rules the whole. Man, but for that no action could attend, And, but for this, were active to no end: Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void, Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.
Alexander Pope
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Such as are still observing upon others are like those who are always abroad at other men's houses, reforming everything there while their own runs to ruin.
Alexander Pope
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To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines, Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines.
Alexander Pope
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The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Alexander Pope