Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!


The general cry is against ingratitude, but the complaint is misplaced, it should be against vanity; none but direct villains are capable of willful ingratitude; but almost everybody is capable of thinking he hath done more that another deserves, while the other thinks he hath received less than he deserves.

Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.


'Tis hard to tell if greater want of skill

Appear in writing or in judging ill.


'Tis education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclin'd.


'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ
To gain the riches he can ne'er enjoy.


A bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead.


A little learning is a dangerous thing!



A wit's a feather, and a chief's a god;
An honest man is the noblest work of God.



An atheist is but a mad ridiculous derider of piety; but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion; he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action.



An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded.


An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him.


At every trifle scorn to take offense,
That always shews great pride or little sense.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.


Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but impairs what it would improve.

Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.


For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best.

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


Genuine religion is not so much a matter of feeling as a matter of principle.


Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you.


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.


Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present fate.



Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part; there all the honesty lies.


Hope springs eternal in the human breast,
Man never is, but always to be blest.


Immodest words admit of no defence
For want of decency is want of sense.


In the nice bee what sense so subtly true
From pois'ness herbs extract the healing dew?


Know then this truth, enough for man to know
Virtue alone is happiness below.


Mingles with the friendly bowl,
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.


Of all affliction taught a lover yet
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget.


Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.


Order is heaven's first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.


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


Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.


Pour the full tide of eloquence along,
Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road
But looks through nature up to nature's God.


Such labored nothings, in so strange a style,

Amaze the unlearned, and make the learned smile.

-Alexander Pope
(Front cover of ES C Style Guide)



The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.


The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.


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


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


Truth needs no flowers of speech.


Who shall decide when doctors disagree,
And sound casuists doubt like you and me?



A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

Whilst drinking deeply sobers it again.from his "Essay on Criticism"
"An Essay on Criticism," which was first published in 1711:

"But you who seek to give and merit fame, And justly bear a critic's noble name, Be sure yourself and your own reach to know, How far your genius, taste, and learning go; Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, And mark that point where sense and dullness meet."
(lines 46-51)
AND:
"Some to conceit alone their taste confine, And glitt'ring thoughts struck out ar ev'ry line; Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit."
(lines 289-292)



You eat, in dreams, the custard of the day.