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Wit In Conversation Is Only A Readiness Of Thought And A Facility Of Expression, Or A Quick Conception And An Easy Delivery.

-Alexander Pope

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Wit In Conversation Is

Alexander Pope

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Wit In Conversation Is Only A Readiness Of Thought And A Facility Of Expression, Or A Quick Conception And An Easy Delivery.

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Good Sense, Which Only Is The Gift Of Heaven, And Though No Science, Fairly Worth The Seven.

Some Place The Bliss In Action, Some In Ease, Those Call It Pleasure, And Contentment These.

Oh, Blindness To The Future! Kindly Giv'n, That Each May Fill The Circle Mark'd By Heaven.

See The Wild Waste Of All-devouring Years! How Rome Her Own Sad Sepulchre Appears, With Nodding Arches, Broken Temples Spread! The Very Tombs Now Vanish'd Like Their Dead!

Wholesome Solitude, The Nurse Of Sense!

Only Music Has The Ability To Take You To The Edge Of Reality And Allow You To Peek In For A Moment.

Pleased To The Last, He Crops The Flowery Food, And Licks The Hand Just Raised To Shed His Blood.

And Not A Vanity Is Given In Vain.

Fair Tresses Man's Imperial Race Ensnare; And Beauty Draws Us With A Single Hair.

By Flatterers Besieged And So Obliging That He Ne'er Obliged.

On Life's Vast Ocean Diversely We Sail. Reasons The Card, But Passion The Gale.

At Ev'ry Word A Reputation Dies.

The Heart Resolves This Matter In A Trice, "men Only Feel The Smart, But Not The Vice.

If It Be The Chief Point Of Friendship To Comply With A Friends Motions And Inclinations, He Possesses This In A Eminent Degree; He Lies Down When I Sit, And Walks When I Walk, Which Is More Than Many Good Friends Can Pretend To Do.

Those Move Easiest Who Have Learn'd To Dance.

What Will A Child Learn Sooner Than A Song?

Here Hills And Vales, The Woodland And The Plain Here Earth And Water Seem To Strive Again, Not Chaos-like Together Crushed And Bruised, But, As The World, Harmoniously Confused: Where Order In Variety We See, And Where, Though All Things Differ, All Agree.

For Forms Of Government, Let Fools Contest; Whate'er Is Best Administered, Is Best.

Soft Is The Strain When Zephyr Gently Blows, And The Smooth Stream In Smoother Numbers Flows; But When Loud Surges Lash The Sounding Shore, The Hoarse Rough Verse Should Like The Torrent Roar. When Ajax Strives Some Rock's Vast Weight To Throw, The Line Too Labours, And The Words Move Slow: Not So When Swift Camilla Scours The Plain, Flies O'er Th' Unbending Corn, And Skims Along The Main.

And Soften'd Sounds Along The Waters Die: Smooth Flow The Waves, The Zephyrs Gently Play.

You Eat, In Dreams, The Custard Of The Day.

Never Elated When Someone's Oppressed, Never Dejected When Another One's Blessed.

Homer Excels All The Inventors Of Other Arts In This: That He Has Swallowed Up The Honor Of Those Who Succeeded Him.

Order Is Heaven's First Law; And This Confess, Some Are And Must Be Greater Than The Rest.

And Each Blasphemer Quite Escape The Rod, Because The Insult's Not On Man, But God?

The Grave Unites; Where E'en The Great Find Rest, And Blended Lie Th' Oppressor And Th' Oppressed!

Pleas'd Look Forward, Pleas'd To Look Behind,and Count Each Birthday With A Grateful Mind.

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.

No Senses Stronger Than His Brain Can Bear. Why Has Not Man A Microscopic Eye? For This Plain Reason, Man Is Not A Fly: What The Advantage, If His Finer Eyes Study A Mite, Not Comprehend The Skies?... Or Quick Effluvia Darting Thro' His Brain, Die Of A Rose, In Aromatic Pain? If Nature Thunder'd In His Opening Ears, And Stunn'd Him With The Music Of The Spheres... Who Finds Not Providence All-good And Wise, Alike In What It Gives, And What Denies?

Leave Not A Foot Of Verse, A Foot Of Stone, A Page, A Grave, That They Can Call Their Own; But Spread, My Sons, Your Glory Thin Or Thick, On Passive Paper, Or On Solid Brick.

How Vast A Memory Has Love!

A Man Of Business May Talk Of Philosophy; A Man Who Has None May Practice It.

For Thee I Dim These Eye And Stuff This Head With All Such Reading As Was Never Read.

Ask For What End The Heavenly Bodies Shine, Earth For Whose Use? Pride Answers, 'tis For Mine For Me Kind Nature Wakes Her Genial Power, Suckles Each Herb, And Spreads Out Every Flower.

The Bookful Blockhead, Ignorantly Read With Loads Of Learned Lumber In His Head.

Simplicity Is The Mean Between Ostentation And Rusticity.

Search Then The Ruling Passion; There Alone, The Wild Are Constant, And The Cunning Known; The Fool Consistent, And The False Sincere; Priests, Princes, Women, No Dissemblers Here.

A Gen'rous Heart Repairs A Sland'rous Tongue.

Fine Sense And Exalted Sense Are Not Half So Useful As Common Sense. There Are Forty Men Of Wit For One Man Of Sense; And He That Will Carry Nothing About Him But Gold, Will Be Every Day At A Loss For Want Of Readier Change.

How Happy Is The Blameless Vestal's Lot? The World Forgetting, By The World Forgot.

Destroy All Creatures For Thy Sport Or Gust, Yet Cry, If Man's Unhappy, God's Unjust.

Whate'er The Talents, Or Howe'er Designed, We Hang One Jingling Padlock On The Mind.

Giving Advice Is Many Times Only The Privilege Of Saying A Foolish Thing One's Self, Under The Pretense Of Hindering Another From Doing One.

You Purchase Pain With All That Joy Can Give And Die Of Nothing But A Rage To Live.

He Knows To Live Who Keeps The Middle State, And Neither Leans On This Side Nor On That.

Age And Want Sit Smiling At The Gate.

Education Forms The Common Mind. Just As The Twig Is Bent, The Tree's Inclined.

Man, Like The Generous Vine, Supported Lives; The Strength He Gains Is From The Embrace He Gives.

The Difference Is As Great Between The Optics Seeing As The Objects Seen. All Manners Take A Tincture From Our Own; Or Come Discolor'd Through Out Passions Shown; Or Fancy's Beam Enlarges, Multiplies, Contracts, Inverts, And Gives Ten Thousand Dyes.

The Blest To-day Is As Completely So, As Who Began A Thousand Years Ago.

Love, Hope, And Joy, Fair Pleasure's Smiling Train, Hate, Fear, And Grief, The Family Of Pain, These Mix'd With Art, And To Due Bounds Confin'd Make And Maintain The Balance Of The Mind.

No One Should Be Ashamed To Admit They Are Wrong, Which Is But Saying, In Other Words, That They Are Wiser Today Than They Were Yesterday.

An Obstinate Person Does Not Hold Opinions; They Hold Them.

She Went From Opera, Park, Assembly, Play, To Morning Walks, And Prayers Three Hours A Day. To Part Her Time 'twixt Reading And Bohea, To Muse, And Spill Her Solitary Tea, Or O'er Cold Coffee Trifle With The Spoon, Count The Slow Clock, And Dine Exact At Noon.

How Instinct Varies In The Grov'ling Swine.

Atheists Put On False Courage And Alacrity In The Midst Of Their Darkness And Apprehensions, Like Children Who, When They Fear To Go In The Dark, Will Sing For Fear.

The Meeting Points The Sacred Hair Dissever From The Fair Head, Forever, And Forever! Then Flashed The Living Lightning From Her Eyes, And Screams Of Horror Rend Th' Affrighted Skies.

Know Then This Truth, Enough For Man To Know Virtue Alone Is Happiness Below.

Then From The Mint Walks Forth The Man Of Rhyme, Happy To Catch Me, Just At Dinner-time.

Who Ne'er Knew Joy But Friendship Might Divide,or Gave His Father Grief But When He Died.

While I Live, No Rich Or Noble Knave Shall Walk The World In Credit To His Grave.

And Binding Nature Fast In Fate, Left Free The Human Will.

A Naked Lover Bound And Bleeding Lies!

We Think Our Fathers Fools, So Wise We Grow. Our Wiser Sons, No Doubt Will Think Us So.

Heaven From All Creatures Hides The Book Of Fate.

On Life's Vast Ocean Diversely We Sail, Reason The Card, But Passion Is The Gale; Nor God Alone In The Still Calm We Find, He Mounts The Storm, And Walks Upon The Wind.

The Ruling Passion, Be It What It Will. The Ruling Passion Conquers Reason Still.

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' Good, Or Melt At Others' Woe.

What Some Call Health, If Purchased By Perpetual Anxiety About Diet, Isn't Much Better Than Tedious Disease.

Silence! Coeval With Eternity! Thou Wert Ere Nature's Self Began To Be; Thine Was The Sway Ere Heaven Was Formed On Earth, Ere Fruitful Thought Conceived Creation's Birth.

These Riches Are Possess'd, But Not Enjoy'd!

To Teach Vain Wits That Science Little Known, T' Admire Superior Sense, And Doubt Their Own!

A Long, Exact, And Serious Comedy; In Every Scene Some Moral Let It Teach, And, If It Can, At Once Both Please And Preach.

Our Judgments, Like Our Watches, None Go Just Alike, Yet Each Believes His Own

Who Dare To Love Their Country, And Be Poor.

And All Who Told It Added Something New, And All Who Heard It, Made Enlargements Too.

Behold The Child, By Nature's Kindly Law, Pleased With A Rattle, Tickled With A Straw; Some Livelier Plaything Gives His Youth Delight, A Little Louder, But As Empty Quite; Scarfs, Garters, Gold, Amuse His Riper Stage, And Beads And Prayer-books Are The Toys Of Age. Pleased With This Bauble Still, As That Before, Till Tired He Sleeps, And Life's Poor Play Is O'er.

See Plastic Nature Working To This End, The Single Atoms Each To Other Tend, Attract, Attracted To, The Next In Place Form'd And Impell'd Its Neighbor To Embrace.

What Conscience Dictates To Be Done, Or Warns Me Not To Do; This Teach Me More Than Hell To Shun, That More Than Heav'n Pursue.

The Difference Is Too Nice - Where Ends The Virtue Or Begins The Vice.

Like Following Life Through Creatures You Dissect, You Lose It In The Moment You Detect.

To Swear Is Neither Brave, Polite, Nor Wise.

We Ought, In Humanity, No More To Despise A Man For The Misfortunes Of The Mind Than For Those Of The Body, When They Are Such As He Cannot Help; Were This Thoroughly Considered We Should No More Laugh At A Man For Having His Brains Cracked Than For Having His Head Broke.

O Happiness! Our Being's End And Aim! Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! Whate'er Thy Name: That Something Still Which Prompts The Eternal Sigh, For Which We Bear To Live, Or Dare To Die.

The People's Voice Is Odd, It Is, And It Is Not, The Voice Of God.

Reason, However Able, Cool At Best, Cares Not For Service, Or But Serves When Prest, Stays Till We Call, And Then Not Often Near.

The Most Positive Men Are The Most Credulous.

The Approach Of Night The Skies Yet Blushing With Departing Light, When Falling Dews With Spangles Deck'd The Glade, And The Low Sun Had Lengthen'd Ev'ry Shade.

Poets Like Painters, Thus Unskilled To Trace The Naked Nature And The Living Grace, With Gold And Jewels Cover Ev'ry Part, And Hide With Ornaments Their Want Of Art. True Wit Is Nature To Advantage Dressed, What Oft Was Thought, But Ne'er So Well Expressed.

Consult The Genius Of The Place, That Paints As You Plant, And As You Work.

For I, Who Hold Sage Homer's Rule The Best, Welcome The Coming, Speed The Going Guest.

Men Would Be Angels, Angels Would Be Gods.

Who Builds A Church To God And Not To Fame, Will Never Mark The Marble With His Name.

When Much Dispute Has Past, We Find Our Tenets Just The Same As Last.

Envy Will Merit As Its Shade Pursue, But Like A Shadow, Proves The Substance True.

Oft In Dreams Invention We Bestow To Change A Flounce Or Add A Furbelow.

True Self-love And Social Are The Same.

Superstition Is The Spleen Of The Soul.

The Most Positive Men Are The Most Credulous, Since They Most Believe Themselves, And Advise Most With Their Falsest Flatterer And Worst Enemy--their Own Self-love.

It Is Observable That The Ladies Frequent Tragedies More Than Comedies; The Reason May Be, That In Tragedy Their Sex Is Deified And Adored, In Comedy Exposed And Ridiculed.

How Index-learning Turns No Student Pale, Yet Holds The Eel Of Science By The Tail!

Fly, Dotard, Fly! With Thy Wise Dreams And Fables Of The Sky.

Where Beams Of Imagination Play, The Memory's Soft Figures Melt Away.

Of All Affliction Taught A Lover Yet, 'tis True The Hardest Science To Forget.

Virtue Alone Is Happiness Below.

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.

Woman's At Best A Contradiction Still.

Let Such Teach Others Who Themselves Excel, And Censure Freely Who Have Written Well.

Fame, Wealth, And Honour! What Are You To Love?

Mark What Unvary'd Laws Preserve Each State, Laws Wise As Nature, And As Fixed As Fate.

Good-nature And Good-sense Must Ever Join; To Err Is Human, To Forgive, Divine.

All Chance, Direction, Which Thou Canst Not See

Truth Shines The Brighter, Clad In Verse.

The Pure And Noble, The Graceful And Dignified, Simplicity Of Language Is Nowhere In Such Perfection As In The Scriptures And Homer. The Whole Book Of Job, With Regard Both To Sublimity Of Thought And Morality, Exceeds, Beyond All Comparison, The Most Noble Parts Of Homer.

Two Purposes In Human Nature Rule. Self- Love To Urge, And Reason To Restrain.

Whate'er The Passion, Knowledge, Fame, Or Pelf, Not One Will Change His Neighbor With Himself.

Good God! How Often Are We To Die Before We Go Quite Off This Stage? In Every Friend We Lose A Part Of Ourselves, And The Best Part.

Sickness Is A Sort Of Early Old Age; It Teaches Us A Diffidence In Our Earthly State.

A Little Learning Is A Dangerous Thing.

Where Grows?--where Grows It Not? If Vain Our Toil, We Ought To Blame The Culture, Not The Soil.

Still Follow Sense, Of Ev'ry Art The Soul, Parts Answering Parts Shall Slide Into A Whole.

Rogues In Rags Are Kept In Countenance By Rogues In Ruffles.

And Die Of Nothing But A Rage To Live.

Every Man Has Just As Much Vanity As He Wants Understanding.

Trust Not Yourself, But Your Defects To Know, Make Use Of Every Friend And Every Foe.

How Shall I Lose The Sin, Yet Keep The Sense, And Love The Offender, Yet Detest The Offence?

Authors, Like Coins, Grow Dear As They Grow Old.

Expression Is The Dress Of Thought.

Nature Made Every Fop To Plague His Brother, Just As One Beauty Mortifies Another.

The Muse But Serv'd To Ease Some Friend, Not Wife, / To Help Me Through This Long Disease, My Life.

What Reason Weaves, By Passion Is Undone.

Therefore They Who Say Our Thoughts Are Not Our Own Because They Resemble The Ancients, May As Well Say Our Faces Are Not Our Own, Because They Are Like Our Fathers: And Indeed It Is Very Unreasonable, That People Should Expect Us To Be Scholars, And Yet Be Angry To Find Us So.

Then Sculpture And Her Sister Arts Revived; Stones Leaped To Form, And Rocks Began To Live.

A Perfect Judge Will Read Each Work Of Wit With The Same Spirit That Its Author Writ: Survey The Whole, Nor Seek Slight Faults To Find Where Nature Moves, And Rapture Warms The Mind.

Time Conquers All, And We Must Time Obey.

A Tree Is A Nobler Object Than A Prince In His Coronation-robes.

Genuine Religion Is Not So Much A Matter Of Feeling As A Matter Of Principle.

Chaste To Her Husband, Frank To All Beside, A Teeming Mistress, But A Barren Bride.

"with Ev'ry Pleasing, Ev'ry Prudent Part, Say, What Can Chloe Want?"-she Wants A Heart.

Honor And Shame From No Condition Rise. Act Well Your Part: There All The Honor Lies.

No Creature Smarts So Little As A Fool.

For When Success A Lover's Toil Attends,few Ask, If Fraud Or Force Attain'd His Ends

From Nature's Chain Whatever Link You Strike, Tenth Or Ten Thousandth, Breaks The Chain Alike.

When To The Permanent Is Sacrificed The Mutable, The Prize Is Thine: The Drop Returneth Whence It Came. The Open Path Leads To The Changeless Change - Non-being, The Glorious State Of Absoluteness, The Bliss Past Human Thought.

Ladies, Like Variegated Tulips, Show 'tis To Their Changes Half Their Charms We Owe.

Go, Wiser Thou! And In Thy Scale Of Sense Weigh Thy Opinion Against Providence.

Tis Use Alone That Sanctifies Expense And Splendor Borrow All Her Rays From Sense.

Health Consists With Temperance Alone.

Here Am I, Dying Of A Hundred Good Symptoms.

Famous Last Words

What Dire Offence From Am'rous Causes Springs, What Mighty Contests Rise From Trivial Things.

See Skulking Truth To Her Old Cavern Fled, Mountains Of Casuistry Heap'd O'er Her Head! Philosophy, That Lean'd On Heav'n Before, Shrinks To Her Second Cause, And Is No More. Physic Of Metaphysic Begs Defence, And Metaphysic Calls For Aid On Sense! See Mystery To Mathematics Fly!

Truths Would You Teach, Or Save A Sinking Land? All Fear, None Aid You, And Few Understand.

What Riches Give Us Let Us Then Inquire: Meat, Fire, And Clothes. What More? Meat, Clothes, And Fire. Is This Too Little?

Behold The Child, By Nature's Kindly Law Pleased With A Rattle, Tickled With A Straw.

As Some To Church Repair, Not For The Doctrine, But The Music There. These Equal Syllables Alone Require, Though Oft The Ear The Open Vowels Tire While Expletives Their Feeble Aid Do Join, And Ten Low Words Oft Creep In One Dull Line.

Oh! Blest With Temper, Whose Unclouded Ray Can Make To-morrow Cheerful As To-day.

The World Is A Thing We Must Of Necessity Either Laugh At Or Be Angry At; If We Laugh At It, They Say We Are Proud; If We Are Angry At It, They Say We Are Ill-natured.

Others Import Yet Nobler Arts From France, Teach Kings To Fiddle, And Make Senates Dance.

All Seems Infected That Th' Infected Spy, As All Looks Yellow To The Jaundiced Eye.

A Saint In Crape Is Twice A Saint In Lawn.

Soft O'er The Shrouds Aerial Whispers Breathe, That Seemed But Zephyrs To The Train Beneath.

Learning Is Like Mercury, One Of The Most Powerful And Excellent Things In The World In Skillful Hands; In Unskillful, The Most Mischievous.

Never Find Fault With The Absent.

Worth Makes The Man, And Want Of It The Fellow; The Rest Is All But Leather And Prunello.

The Only Time You Run Out Of Chances Is When You Stop Taking Them

Cavil You May, But Never Criticise.

Aurora Now, Fair Daughter Of The Dawn, Sprinkled With Rosy Light The Dewy Lawn.

Some Are Bewildered In The Maze Of Schools, And Some Made Coxcombs Nature Meant But Fools.

The Light Of Heaven Restore; Give Me To See, And Ajax Asks No More.

The Hog That Ploughs Not, Not Obeys Thy Call, Lives On The Labours Of This Lord Of All.

So Upright Quakers Please Both Man And God.

There Is A Majesty In Simplicity.

Great Oaks Grow From Little Acorns. He Has A Green Thumb. He Has Green Fingers. He's Sowing His Wild Oats. Here Ceres' Gifts In Waving Prospect Stand, And Nodding Tempt The Joyful Reaper's Hand.

The Enormous Faith Of Many Made For One.

Yes, I Am Proud; I Must Be Proud To See Men Not Afraid Of God, Afraid Of Me.

Devotion's Self Shall Steal A Thought From Heaven.

Strength Of Mind Is Exercise, Not Rest.

Pleasures Are Ever In Our Hands Or Eyes; And When In Act They Cease, In Prospect Rise.

Condition, Circumstance, Is Not The Thing; Bliss Is The Same In Subject Or In King.

We May See The Small Value God Has For Riches, By The People He Gives Them To.

Is It, In Heav'n, A Crime To Love Too Well?

See! From The Brake The Whirring Pheasant Springs, And Mounts Exulting On Triumphant Wings; Short Is His Joy! He Feels The Fiery Wound, Flutters In Blood, And Panting Beats The Ground.

As Some To Church Repair, Not For The Doctrine, But The Music There.

To Him No High, No Low, No Great, No Small; He Fills, He Bounds, Connects And Equals All!

Fools Admire, But Men Of Sense Approve.

But Blind To Former As To Future Fate, What Mortal Knows His Pre-existent State?

Act Well Your Part, There All The Honour Lies.

There Still Remains To Mortify A Wit The Many-headed Monster Of The Pit.

The Man That Loves And Laughs Must Sure Do Well.

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.

Extremes In Nature Equal Ends Produce; In Man They Join To Some Mysterious Use.

Genius Creates, And Taste Preserves. Taste Is The Good Sense Of Genius; Without Taste, Genius Is Only Sublime Folly.

To Wake The Soul By Tender Strokes Of Art, To Raise The Genius, And To Mend The Heart

Be Not The First By Whom The New Are Tried, Nor Yet The Last To Lay The Old Aside.

On Wings Of Wind Came Flying All Abroad.

There Never Was Any Party, Faction, Sect, Or Cabal Whatsoever, In Which The Most Ignorant Were Not The Most Violent; For A Bee Is Not A Busier Animal Than A Blockhead.

The Lights And Shades, Whose Well-accorded Strife Gives All The Strength And Color Of Our Life.

Heaven Gave To Woman The Peculiar Grace To Spin, To Weep, And Cully Human Race.

Sure Of Their Qualities And Demanding Praise, More Go To Ruined Fortunes Than Are Raised.

In A Sadly Pleasing Strain, Let The Warbling Lute Complain.

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