Tag: Alexander Pope

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

Say, is not absence death to those who love?

Alexander Pope

The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)

Vital spark of heav’nly flame!

Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame:

Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,

Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!

Stanza 1

Hark! they whisper; angels say,

Sister spirit, come away!

Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears!

Heav’n opens on my eyes! my ears

With sounds seraphic ring!

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!

O grave! where is thy victory?

O death! where is thy sting?

Alexander Pope

I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

Alexander Pope

I have nothing to say for rhyme, but that I doubt whether a poem can support itself without it, in our language; unless it be stiffened with such strange words, as are likely to destroy our language itself.

Alexander Pope

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:

God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.

Alexander Pope

There various news I heard of love and strife,

Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,

Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,

Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,

Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,

Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,

Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,

The fall of favourites, projects of the great,

Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:

All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.

Alexander Pope

To err is human, to forgive divine.

Alexander Pope

I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.

Alexander Pope

Happy the man whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air

In his own ground.

Alexander Pope