Alexander Pope

"“Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”"

"“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,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 but to die, and reas'ning but to err;Alike in ignorance, his reason such,Whether he thinks too little or too much;Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;Still by himself abused or disabused;Created half to rise, and half to fall;Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,Correct old time, and regulate the sun;Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,And quitting sense call imitating God;As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,And turn their heads to imitate the sun. Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!”"

"“Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please,With too much spirit to be e'er at ease,With too much quickness ever to be taught,With too much thinking to have common thought:You purchase pain with all that joy can give,And die of nothing but a rage to live.”"

"“Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest. The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”"

"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."

"Tis but a part we see, and not a whole."

"Never find fault with the absent."

"Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon."

"Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."

"So vast is art, so narrow human wit."

"A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left."

"To err is human; to forgive, divine."

"Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe."

"They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake."

"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."

"The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave."

"The most positive men are the most credulous."

"Health consists with temperance alone."

"And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade."

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn'd to dance."