Quotes
Quotes - Pope
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us, and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield.
Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.
Say first, of God above or man below,
What can we reason but from what we know?
'T is but a part we see, and not a whole.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state.
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way.
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes:
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel.
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason,--man is not a fly.
Die of a rose in aromatic pain.
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.
Remembrance and reflection how allied!
What thin partitions sense from thought divide!
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all!
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
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 hurled,--
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot.
In lazy apathy let stoics boast
Their virtue fix'd: 't is fix'd as in a frost;
Contracted all, retiring to the breast;
But strength of mind is exercise, not rest.
