Alexander Pope

Teach me to feel another's woe, To right the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.

If I am right, Thy grace import Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, oh teach my heart To find that better way!

Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume Thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land On each I judge Thy foe.

And binding Nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.

Thou Great First Cause, least understood Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good And that myself am blind.

Father of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.

To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.

The most positive men are the most credulous...

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

Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.

Our passions are like convulsion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.

He who tells a lie, is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labour of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

For, as blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.

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

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

To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense, is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.

How loved, how honored once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot; A heap of dust alone remains of thee; 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!

And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances and the public show.

Lo these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd, And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield. Thus unlamented pass the proud away, The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day! So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow For others' …