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Publilius Syrus

Publilius Syrus, (fl. 85 – 43 BC), was a Latin writer, best known for his sententiae. He was a Syrian who was brought as a slave to Italy, but by his wit and talent he won the favour of his master, who freed and educated him.

Sentences

 * See also The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus
 * Sententiae, a collection of maxims in verse form, given alphabetically (in Latin).

 * Note: Many different editions of the Sententiae have been published, each with significant variation as to the inclusion and exclusion of quotes.

 * Inopi beneficium bis dat, qui dat celeriter.
 * He doubly benefits the needy who gives quickly.
 * Maxim 6

 * Alienum aes homini ingenuo acerba est servitus.
 * Bitter for a free man is the bondage of debt.
 * Maxim 14
 * Variant: "Debt is the slavery of the free."

 * Ames parentem, si aequus est, si aliter, feras.
 * If your parent is just, revere him; if not, bear with him.
 * Maxim 27

 * Audendo virtus crescit, tardando timor.
 * Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.
 * Maxim 63
 * Variant translation: "Valour grows by daring, fear by holding back."

 * Honesta fama melior est pecunia.
 * A good reputation is more valuable than money.
 * Maxim 108

 * Contra impudentem stulta est nimia ingenuitas
 * Too much straightforwardness is foolish against a shameless person.
 * Maxim 123

 * He who helps the guilty, shares the crime.
 * Maxim 139

 * Honesta turpitudo est pro causa bona.
 * For a good cause, wrongdoing is virtuous.
 * Maxim 207

 * Inopiae desunt multa, avaritiae omnia.
 * Poverty is the lack of many things, but avarice is the lack of all things.
 * Maxim 236

 * Fortuna cum blanditur, captatum venit.
 * When Fortune flatters, she does it to betray.
 * Maxim 277

 * Fortuna vitrea est: tum cum splendet frangitur.
 * Fortune is like glass—the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.
 * Maxim 280

 * Fortunam citius reperias quam retineas.
 * It is more easy to get a favor from Fortune than to keep it.
 * Maxim 282

 * Formonsa facies muta commendatio est.
 * A beautiful face is a silent commendation.
 * Maxim 283

 * In tranquillo esse quisque gubernator potest.
 * Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
 * Maxim 358

 * Iudex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur.
 * The judge is condemned when the guilty is absolved.
 * Maxim 407
 * Adopted by the original Edinburgh Review magazine as its motto.

 * Necessitas dat legem non ipsa accipit.
 * Necessity gives the law without itself acknowledging one.
 * Maxim 444
 * Variant translation: Necessity knows no law except to conquer.
 * Necessitas non habet legem, "Necessity has no law", is apparently of medieval origin. See Necessity for further variants.

 * Malum est consilium, quod mutari non potest.
 * It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.
 * Maxim 469

 * Invitat culpam qui peccatum praeterit
 * Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many.
 * Maxim 750

 * Stultum facit fortuna, quem vult perdere.
 * Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.
 * Maxim 911; one of the most famous renditions of the ancient Greek proverb (which is anonymous and dates to the 5th century BCE or earlier). The provenance of the proverb and its English versions is at Wikiquote's Euripides page, under the heading "Misattributed".

 * Taciturnitas stulto homini pro sapientia est.
 * Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
 * Maxim 914

 * Velox consilium sequitur paenitentia.
 * Penitence follows hasty decisions.
 * Maxim 961

 * Proximum ab innocentia tenet locum verecunda peccati confessio.
 * Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocence.
 * Maxim 1060

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

 * English quotations from The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave: from the Latin (1856), by Darius Lyman, Jun., A. M.

 * Note: Many quotes are misattributed to Syrus; if they do not have a Latin form in a credible modern scholarly work, they are often popular phrases not due to Syrus. The "Maxims" in Lyman (1856) are particularly suspect. Due to frequent misattribution, only phrases found in Latin lists of Syrus's works are credible. Notably, Lyman (1856) does not include Latin, adds nonstandard numbering by "Maxim", and misattributes numerous phrases to Syrus. However, its translations are usable, and given here.

 * As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
 * Maxim 1

 * Receive an injury rather than do one.
 * Maxim 5

 * We are interested in others, when they are interested in us.
 * Maxim 16

 * Every one excels in something in which another fails.
 * Maxim 17

 * There is no penalty attached to a lover's oath.
 * Maxim 23

 * The anger of lovers renews the strength of love.
 * Maxim 24

 * Confidence is the only bond of friendship.
 * Maxim 34

 * Adversity shows whether we have friends, or only the shadows of friends.
 * Maxim 35

 * The loss which is unknown is no loss at all.
 * Maxim 38

 * A wise man rules his passions, a fool obeys them.
 * Maxim 49

 * When reason rules, money is a blessing.
 * Maxim 50

 * Tension weakens the bow; the want of it, the mind.
 * Maxim 59

 * He sleeps well who knows not that he sleeps ill.
 * Maxim 77

 * He dies twice who perishes by his own hand.
 * Maxim 97

 * To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent.
 * Maxim 113

 * Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.
 * Maxim 120

 * Life is short, but its ills make it seem long.
 * Maxim 124

 * There is but a step between a proud man's glory and his disgrace.
 * Maxim 138

 * An agreeable companion on a journey is as good as a carriage.
 * Maxim 143

 * Society in shipwreck is a comfort to all.
 * Maxim 144

 * Many receive advice, few profit by it.
 * Maxim 149

 * Have courage, or cunning, when you deal with an enemy.
 * Maxim 156

 * Patience is a remedy for every sorrow.
 * Maxim 170

 * What happens to one man may happen to all.
 * Maxim 171

 * While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.
 * Maxim 185

 * Whatever you can lose, you should reckon of no account.
 * Maxim 191

 * For him who loves labor, there is always something to do.
 * Maxim 219

 * Solitude is the mother of anxieties.
 * Maxim 222

 * Even a single hair casts its shadow.
 * Maxim 228

 * Pain will force even the truthful to speak falsely.
 * Maxim 232

 * It is sometimes expedient to forget who we are.
 * Maxim 233

 * We may with advantage at times forget what we know.
 * Maxim 234

 * Even when the wound is healed, the scar remains.
 * Maxim 236

 * Even when there is no law, there is conscience.
 * Maxim 237

 * You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.
 * Maxim 262

 * What is left when honor is lost?
 * Maxim 265

 * A fair exterior is a silent recommendation.
 * Maxin 267

 * Fortune is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.
 * Maxim 274

 * When Fortune is on our side, popular favor bears her company.
 * Maxim 275

 * His own character is the arbiter of every one's fortune.
 * Maxim 283

 * There are some remedies worse than the disease.
 * Maxim 301

 * Powerful indeed is the empire of habit.
 * Maxim 305

 * Do not take part in the council, unless you are called.
 * Maxim 310

 * By doing nothing men learn to do ill.
 * Maxim 318
 * Compare Ecclesiasticus 33:27 (KJV): "idleness teacheth much evil".

 * Amid a multitude of projects, no plan is devised.
 * Maxim 319

 * Success makes some crimes honorable.
 * Maxim 326

 * When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all.
 * Maxim 338

 * In sterculino plurimum gallus potest.
 * A cock has great influence on his own dunghill.
 * Maxim 357

 * No tears are shed, when an enemy dies.
 * Maxim 376

 * To forget the wrongs you receive, is to remedy them.
 * Maxim 383

 * The bow too tensely strung is easily broken.
 * Maxim 388

 * Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.
 * Maxim 401

 * Practice is the best of all instructors.
 * Maxim 439

 * A noble spirit finds a cure for injustice in forgetting it.
 * Maxim 441

 * He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.
 * Maxim 459

 * Never find your delight in another's misfortune.
 * Maxim 467

 * The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
 * Maxim 511

 * Saxum volutum non obducitur musco
 * A rolling stone gathers no moss.
 * Maxim 524

 * Never promise more than you can perform.
 * Maxim 528

 * No one should be judge in his own cause.
 * Maxim 545

 * Nothing can be done at once hastily and prudently.
 * Maxim 557

 * Quod vult habet, qui cupere quod sat est potest.
 * We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have.
 * Maxim 559 [Mimi et aliorum sententiae 677]

 * It is only the ignorant who despise education.
 * Maxim 571

 * Don't turn back when you are just at the goal.
 * Maxim 580

 * No man is happy who does not think himself so.
 * Maxim 584

 * He is a despicable sage whose wisdom does not profit himself.
 * Maxim 629

 * Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.
 * Maxim 633

 * Money alone sets all the world in motion.
 * Maxim 656

 * Be your money's master, not its slave.
 * Maxim 657

 * It is a very hard undertaking to seek to please everybody.
 * Maxim 675

 * We should provide in peace what we need in war.
 * Maxim 709

 * God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.
 * Maxim 715

 * It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.
 * Maxim 780

 * No one knows what he can do till he tries.
 * Maxim 786

 * They pass peaceful lives who ignore mine and thine.
 * Maxim 790

 * Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
 * Maxim 847

 * Better to be ignorant of a matter than half know it.
 * Maxim 865

 * Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.
 * Maxim 872

 * The greatest of empires, is the empire over one's self.
 * Maxim 891

 * Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as what it has not.
 * Maxim 927

 * The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.
 * Maxim 941

 * Either be silent or say something better than silence.
 * Maxim 960

 * It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery.
 * Maxim 995

 * I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
 * Maxim 1070

 * Speech is a mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.
 * Maxim 1073

 * Let your life be pleasing to the multitude, and it can not be so to yourself.
 * Maxim 1075

Misattributed

 * To do two things at once is to do neither.
 * Misattributed as Maxim 7, p. 13
 * Variant of:
 * Duos qui sequitur lepores neutrum capit
 * He who follows two hares catches neither.
 * A Dictionary of Quotations in most frequent Use, David Evans Macdonnel, 1797, quoted in The Monthly Review, 1798, p. 467
 * Apparently of medieval or modern origin, not found in antiquity.

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Mary Abigail Dodge

Mary Abigail Dodge (March 31, 1833 – August 17, 1896) was an American writer and essayist, under pseudonym Gail Hamilton. Her writing is noted for its wit and promotion of equality of education and occupation for women.

Quotes

 * Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word.
 * Country Living and Country Thinking, Preface, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Every person is responsible for only the good within his abilities, and for no more, and no one can tell whose sphere is the largest.
 * Country Living and Country Thinking, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * The total depravity of inanimate things.
 * Epigram, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Mary Abigail Dodge


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Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon (1737-05-08 [or 1737-04-27, O.S.] – 1794-01-16) was arguably the most important historian since the time of the ancient Roman Tacitus. Gibbon's magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788, is a groundbreaking work of early modern erudition, the broad influence of which endures to this day.

See also The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Quotes

 * I cannot repress my indignation at the use of those foolish obsolete, odious, words Whig and Tory.
 * Letter to Lord Sheffield (7 August 1790), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), p. 195

 * Burke's book is a most admirable medication against the French disease, which has made too much progress even in this happy country. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can even forgive his superstition.
 * Letter to Lord Sheffield after reading Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (5 February 1791), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), p. 216

 * The primitive Church, which I have treated with some freedom, was itself at that time, an innovation, and I was attached to the old Pagan establishment.
 * Letter to Lord Sheffield (5 February 1791), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), p. 216

 * Poor Burke is the most eloquent and rational madman that I ever knew. I love Fox's feelings, but I detest the political principles of the man and of the party. ... Should you admire the National assembly we shall have many an altercation, for I am as high an Aristocrate as Burke himself, and he has truly observed that it is impossible to debate with temper on the subject of that cursed Revolution.
 * Letter to Lord Sheffield (31 May 1791), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), pp. 229–230

 * [I]n this rage against slavery, in the numerous petitions against the Slave trade was there no leaven of new democratical principles, no wild ideas of the rights and natural equality of man? It is these I fear.
 * Letter to Lord Sheffield (30 May 1792), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), p. 257

 * I shuddered at Gray's motion, disliked the half-support of Fox, admired the firmness of Pitts declaration, and excused the usual intemperance of Burke. ... I see a Club of reform which contains some respectable names. ... Will they heat the minds of the people? does the French democracy gain no ground? ... Will you not take some active measures to declare your sound opinions and separate yourselves from your rotten members? If you allow them to perplex government, if you trifle with this solemn business, if you do not resist the spirit of innovation in the first attempt, if you admit the smallest and most specious change in our parliamentary system, you are lost. You will be driven from one step to another, from principles just in theory to consequences most pernicious in practise, and your first concessions will be productive of every subsequent mischief for which you will be answerable to your country and to posterity. Do not suffer yourselves to be lulled into a false security. Remember the proud fabric of the French Monarchy. Not four years ago it stood founded as it might seem, on the rock of time force and opinion, supported by the triple Aristocracy of the Church, the Nobility, and the Parliaments. They are crumbled into dust, they are vanished from the earth. If this tremendous warning has no effect on the men of property in England, if it does not open every eye, and raise every arm, you will deserve your fate.
 * Letter to Lord Sheffield (30 May 1792), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), pp. 257–258

 * Had the French improved their glorious opportunity to erect a free constitutional Monarchy on the ruins of arbitrary power and the Bastille, I should applaud their generous effort; but this total subversion of all rank, order, and government, could be productive only of a popular monster, which after devouring every thing else, must finally devour itself. I was once apprehensive that this monster would propagate some imps in our happy island, but they seem to have been crushed in the cradle, and I acknowledge with pleasure and pride the good sense of the English nation, who seem truly conscious of the blessings which they enjoy; and I am happy to find that the most respectable part of opposition has cordially joyned in the support of ‘things as they are’. Even this country has been somewhat tainted with the Democratical infection, the vigilance of Government has been exerted, the malecontents have been awed, the misguided have been undeceived, the feaver in the blood has gradually subsided, and I flatter myself that we have secured the tranquil enjoyment of obscure felicity, which we had been almost tempted to despise.
 * Letter to Dorothea Gibbon (1 August 1792), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), pp. 265–266

 * [T]he last revolution of Paris appears to have convinced almost every body of the fatal consequences of Democratical principles, which lead by a path of flowers into the Abyss of Hell.
 * Letter to Lord Sheffield (23 August 1792), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), p. 268

 * My own choice has indeed transported me into a foreign land, but I am truly attached from interest and inclination to my native country: and even as a Citizen of the World, I wish the stability of England, the sole great refuge of mankind against the opposite mischiefs of despotism and democracy.
 * Letter to Lord Sheffield (1 January 1793), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), p. 307

 * Louis had given and suffered every thing. The cruelty of the French was aggravated by ingratitude, and a life of innocence was crowned by the death of a saint, or, what is far better, of a virtuous prince, who deserves our pity and esteem. He might have lived and reigned, had he possessed as much active courage as he was endowed with patient fortitude. When I read the accounts from home, of the universal grief and indignation which that fatal event excited, I indeed gloried in the character of an Englishman. Our national fame is now pure and splendid; we have nobly stood forth in the common cause of mankind; and although our armaments are somewhat slow, I still persuade myself that we shall give the last deadly wound to the Gallic hydra.
 * Letter to Lady Elizabeth Foster (4 April 1793), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), pp. 324–325

 * My own contempt for the wild & mischievous system of Democracy will not suffer me to believe without positive proof that it can be adopted by any man of a sound understanding and historical experience.
 * Letter to John Gillies (24 June 1793), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), pp. 337

The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

 * For more from this see the article The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

 * The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered by any mixture of theological rancour; nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different religions of the earth. Fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed him to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors. The thin texture of the Pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant materials.
 * Volume 1, Chapter 2 "Of the Union and Internal Prosperity of the Roman Empire, in the Age of the Antonines". The portion regarding the views of the religions of the time taken by various constituencies has been misreported as Gibbon's own assessment of religion generally. See Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (1990), pp. 34–35.
 * The bold text has been misattributed to Lucretius and Seneca the Younger.

 * Antoninus diffused order and tranquility over the greatest part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
 * Vol. 1, Ch. 3 "Of the Constitution of the Roman Empire, in the Age of the Antonines"
 * This has often been paraphrased: History is indeed little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

 * Such is the constitution of civil society, that whilst a few persons are distinguished by riches, by honors, and by knowledge, the body of the people is condemned to obscurity, ignorance and poverty. The Christian religion, which addressed itself to the whole human race, must consequently collect a far greater number of proselytes from the lower than from the superior ranks of life. This innocent and natural circumstance has been improved into a very odious imputation, which seems to be less strenuously denied by the apologists, than it is urged by the adversaries, of the faith; that the new sect of Christians was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves, the last of whom might sometimes introduce the missionaries into the rich and noble families to which they belonged. These obscure teachers (such was the charge of malice and infidelity) are as mute in public as they are loquacious and dogmatical in private. Whilst they cautiously avoid the dangerous encounter of philosophers, they mingle with the rude and illiterate crowd, and insinuate themselves into those minds, whom their age, their sex, or their education, has the best disposed to receive the impression of superstitious terrors.

 * The reign of Antoninus is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history, which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 3. Compare: "L'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs" (translated: "History is but the record of crimes and misfortunes"), Voltaire, L'Ingénu, chap. x.

 * It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 5

 * Clodius Albinus surpassed both his competitors in the nobility of his extraction. Which he derived from the most illustrious names of the old Republic, but the branch from which he claimed descent had long sunk into mean circumstances, and transplanted into a remote province. It is difficult to form a just idea of his character. Under the philisophic cloak of austerity, he stands accused of concealing most of the vices which degrade human nature.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 5.

 * Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 11.

 * Wit and valor are qualities that are more easily ascertained than virtue, or the love of wisdom.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 1.

 * Amiable weaknesses of human nature.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 14. Compare: "Amiable weakness", Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Book x, Chapter viii.

 * In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 48. Compare: "He had a head to contrive, a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute any mischief", Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (on Hampden), History of the Rebellion, Vol. iii, Book vii, Section 84.

 * Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 49.

 * The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 68. Compare: "On dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons" (translated: "It is said that God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions"), Voltaire, Letter to M. le Riche. 1770; "J'ai toujours vu Dieu du coté des gros bataillons (translated: "I have always noticed that God is on the side of the heaviest battalions"), De la Ferté to Anne of Austria.

 * Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 71.

 * All gates are shut against the unfortunate.
 * Vol. III

 * When Gallienus received the intelligence that his capital was delivered from the barbarians, he was much less delighted than alarmed with the courage of the senate, since it might one day prompt them to rescue the public from domestic tyranny as well as from foreign invasion. His timid ingratitude was published to his subjects, in an edict which prohibited the senators from exercising any military employment, and even from approaching the camps of the legions. But his fears were groundless. The rich and luxurious nobles, sinking into their natural character, accepted, as a favor, this disgraceful exemption from military service; and as long as they were indulged in the enjoyment of their baths, their theatres, and their villas, they cheerfully resigned the more dangerous cares of empire to the rough hands of peasants and soldiers.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 10.

 * It is difficult to paint the light, the various, the inconstant character of Gallienus, which he displayed without constraint, as soon as he became sole possessor of the empire. Ritratto di gallieno, 253-268 dc ca, dalla casa delle vestali.jpg every art that he attempted, his lively genius enabled him to succeed; and as his genius was destitute of judgment, he attempted every art, except the important ones of war and government. He was a master of several curious, but useless sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and most contemptible prince... There were, however, a few short moments in the life of Gallienus, when, exasperated by some recent injury, he suddenly appeared the intrepid soldier and the cruel tyrant; till, satiated with blood, or fatigued by resistance, he insensibly sunk into the natural mildness and indolence of his character.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 10.

 * Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerated.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 10.

 * A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches, had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity.
 * Vol. 1, Chap. 71.

 * In a distant age and climate the tragic scene of the death of Hussyn will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
 * Vol. 5, pages:391–392.

 * In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet [Muhammad] rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance. This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture; whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius... If the composition of the Koran exceed the faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes?
 * EGPaIV" Edward Gibbon, [1788], Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5, Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. Part IV.

 * Benevolence is the foundation of Justice, since we are forbidden to injure those we are bound to assist. A prophet may reveal the secrets of Heaven and futurity, but in his moral precepts he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.
 * EGPaIV" Edward Gibbon, [1788], Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5, Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. Part IV.

 * To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor ...
 * Preface to the fourth volume of the original quarto edition

Memoirs (1796)

 * The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.

 * Decent easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder.

 * It was here [at the age of seventeen] that I suspended my religious inquiries.

 * I saw and loved.
 * Vol. i. p. 106. Compare: "None ever loved but at first sight they loved", George Chapman, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria.

 * I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.

 * Crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
 * Referring to London.

 * The captain of the Hampshire grenadiers...has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.

 * It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.

 * On the approach of spring I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
 * Vol. i. p. 116.

 * I was never less alone than when by myself.
 * Vol. i. p. 117. Compare: "Never less alone than when alone", Samuel Rogers, Human Life; "In solitude, where we are least alone", Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III, Stanza 90.

Misattributed

 * In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
 * This quotation appeared in an article by Margaret Thatcher, "The Moral Foundations of Society" (Imprimis, March 1995), which was an edited version of a lecture Thatcher had given at Hillsdale College in November 1994. Here is the actual passage from Thatcher's article:
 * "[M]ore than they wanted freedom, the Athenians wanted security. Yet they lost everything—security, comfort, and freedom. This was because they wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them. The freedom they were seeking was freedom from responsibility. It is no wonder, then, that they ceased to be free. In the modern world, we should recall the Athenians' dire fate whenever we confront demands for increased state paternalism."
 * The italicized passage above originated with Thatcher. In characterizing the Athenians in the article she cited Sir Edward Gibbon, but she seems to have been paraphrasing statements in "Athens' Failure," a chapter of classicist Edith Hamilton's book The Echo of Greece (1957), pp. 47–48).

Quotes about Edward Gibbon

 * My highest ambition, and what I hope to do as far as I can, is to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this respect,—that whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile to religion, without speaking directly against it, so my greatest desire would be, in my History, by its high morals and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually bringing it forward.
 * Thomas Arnold, statement on his History of Rome (1826), quoted in A. P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence and Thomas Arnold, Volume I (1845), p. 214

 * In the pages of the Decline and Fall, we seem to be taking a long journey, but all the time we remain in one place: we sit with Gibbon in the ruins of the Capitol. It is from the ruins of the Capitol that we perceive, as from a great distance, a thousand years filled with dim shapes of men moving blindly, performing strangely, in an unreal shadowy world. We do not enter the Middle Ages, or relive a span of human experience: still we sit in the ruins of the Capitol, becoming cramped and half numb listening, all this long stationary time, to our unwearied guide as he narrates for us, in a melancholy and falling cadence, the disaster that mankind has suffered, the defeat inflicted by the forces of evil on the human spirit. The Decline and Fall is a history, yes; but something more than a history, a memorial oration: Gibbon is commemorating the death of ancient civilization; he has described, for the “instruction of future ages,” the “triumph of barbarism and religion.”
 * Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932), pp. 117–118

 * I don't know but you have spoken too highly of Gibbon's book; the Dean of Derry, who is our Club as well as Gibbon, talks of answering it. I think it is right that as fast as infidel wasps or venomous insects, whether creeping or flying, are hatched, they should be crushed. [...] He is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our literary Club to me.
 * James Boswell, in Letters of James Boswell, Addressed to the Rev. W.J. Temple (1857)

 * In the Decline and Fall, the civic humanist cycle of corruption, so often repeated in Gibbon's history, was balanced by another and newer theme, the Enlightenment's conception of the development of civilisation, which surrounds the work with an optimism which the story it tells, by itself, could hardly warrant. The notion of the gradual progress of the useful arts, through human industry, is one aspect of that optimism: Gibbon owes a debt, reflected in his footnotes, to Smith's Wealth of Nations. It is true that this version of progress is not heavily stressed; in the Decline and Fall, the most obvious antithesis is still the old one of republican patriotism and barbarian hardihood set against the "indolence", "luxury" and "effeminacy" of supine Asiatics and of once energetic former barbarian conquerors enervated by their own success. Yet there is clearly another possible antithesis to indolence and luxury: industry and a permissible (if still dangerous) civilised opulence.
 * J. W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (1981), p. 63

 * I set out upon the eight volumes of Dean Milman's edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I was immediately dominated both by the story and the style. All through the long glistening middle hours of the Indian day, from when we quitted stables till the evening shadows proclaimed the hour of Polo, I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all. I scribbled all my opinions on the margins of the pages, and very soon found myself a vehement partisan of the author against the disparagements of his pompous-pious editor. I was not even estranged by his naughty footnotes. On the other hand the Dean's apologies and disclaimers roused my ire. So pleased was I with The Decline and Fall that I began at once to read Gibbon's Autobiography, which luckily was bound up in the same edition. When I read his reference to his old nurse: "If there be any, as I trust there are some, who rejoice that I live, to that dear and excellent woman their gratitude is due," I thought of Mrs. Everest; and it shall be her epitaph.
 * Winston Churchill, My Early Life (1930; 1990), pp. 125-126

 * Gibbon's idol Tacitus had been as much moralist as historian. There is a general message in The Decline and Fall, concerned with the worth of freedom and the idealisation of the Roman republic. Furthermore, Gibbon has no doubts about ethical standards of conduct and behaviour, singling out, for instance, the love of pleasure and the love of action as essential components of normal human nature. Some attempts have been made to trace Gibbon's politics specifically through his History, but these have failed to reveal a simple pattern. His instruction has more to do with the principles of human nature and character. If there is any general lesson beyond that, it takes (as L. P. Curtis has observed) the form of a memorial oration to the governing classes on the subject of wisdom, virtue, and power. But Gibbon was too cynical to have had much faith in the effects of instruction, though that did not prevent him from making it part of his historical writing. The experience of past faults, he pointed out, was seldom profitable to the successive generations of mankind.
 * John Clive, Not By Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History (1989), p. 81

 * The Decline and Fall is a memorial oration. It is, to boot, a sad, stupendous warning to the governing class. Here in the desolation of a thousand years of history lies proof of the destiny of states that depart from the maxims alike of the Roman Republic and of England's Glorious Revolution. Gibbon, soaked in the values of his order, taught its members what they already accepted. His entire history revolves around a formula, around three words, the contents of their social conscience. These words are virtue, wisdom, and power.
 * Lewis P. Curtis, ‘Gibbon's Paradise Lost’, in The Age of Johnson: Essays Presented to Chauncey Brewster Tinker (1949), p. 79

 * Just now I am enthralled by Gibbon's Autobiography. There are passages in it that are more than "correct", and on the border line of beauty. What a giant he is—greatest historian & greatest figure name of the 18th century I say; whether it is his greatness or his remoteness that makes his goings on with religion so queer I do not know.
 * E. M. Forster to Malcolm Darling (15 April 1910), quoted in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster. Volume One, 1879–1920, eds. Mary Lago and P. N. Furbank (1983), p. 107

 * [I]t is impossible, through reading alone, to interpret the past. Nor is emotion enough. The historian must have a third quality as well: some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius. In Gibbon, as in no other English historian, this tenuous circle was complete. He was a genius who read, dreamed, and also knew — knew, by direct contact, a fragment of the rough stuff of society, and extended his knowledge through the ages.
 * E. M. Forster, "Captain Edward Gibbon", (1931) in Abinger Harvest, E. Arnold & Co.: London, 1936.

 * The Oxford edition of Gibbon consists of eight volumes with four or five hundred pages in each volume. The exact number of pages is 3,860. The fondest admirers of Gibbon cannot say that it is light reading. Evening after evening goes by, and, if the reader is conscientious, and does not skip, it is a long time before the work is read. Indeed, in these degenerate days I doubt whether there are many persons in the world who can say that they have read their Gibbon right through.
 * Sir Arthur Helps, in

 * As I ran through your volume of history with great avidity and impatience, I cannot forbear discovering somewhat of the same impatience in returning you thanks for your agreeable present, and expressing the satisfaction which the performance has given me. Whether I consider the dignity of your style, the depth of your matter, or the extensiveness of your learning, I must regard the work as equally the object of esteem.
 * David Hume to Gibbon (18 March 1776), quoted in Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings, in Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Vol. I, ed. Lord Sheffield (1796), p. 148. Gibbon said this "letter from Mr. Hume overpaid the labour of ten years".

 * [T]he effect of Tacitus, the best historian that Rome produced, can be felt in Gibbon, the best modern historian of Rome... Gibbon realized that Tacitus, sometimes seen as primarily a literary artist, preferring point and drama to the dispassionate search for truth, was a genuinely philosophic historian; and Tacitus showed him how a philosophic history could be not hindered but served by irony, disenchantment, and apophthegmatic wit... In both men this way of speaking brings out the ambiguity of history, the hiddenness of human motive. Influence or coincidence? It is impossible to be sure, but it is fair enough to say that Gibbon has Tacitus in his bones.
 * Richard Jenkyns, ‘The Legacy of Rome’, in Richard Jenkyns (ed.), The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal (1992), pp. 20–21

 * Gibbon had no followers, founded no school, and his chief bequest to posterity was in fact his style, one of the most distinctive in the English language, whose influence is now and again detectable in the prose of English historians down to the present day.
 * John Kenyon, The History Men: The Historical Profession in England since the Renaissance (1983; rev. edn. 1993), p. 64

 * No matter what his weaknesses may be, his “writings will instruct the last generation of mankind.” This remark, which Gibbon made about Tacitus, can, with equal justice, be applied to Gibbon himself.
 * Andrew Lossky, ‘Introduction’, in Lynn White, Jr. (ed.), The Transformation of the Roman World: Gibbon's Problem after Two Centuries [1966] (1973), p. 29

 * I picked up Whitaker's criticism on Gibbon. Pointless spite, with here and there a just remark. It would be strange if in so large a work as Gibbon's there were nothing open to just remark. How utterly all the attacks on his History are forgotten! this of Whitaker; Randolph's; Chelsum's; Davies's; that stupid beast Joseph Milner's; even Watson's. And still the book, with all its great faults of substance and style, retains, and will retain, its place in our literature; and this though it is offensive to the religious feeling of the country, and really most unfair where religion is concerned.
 * Thomas Macaulay, journal entry (9 October 1850), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), pp. 284–285

 * Is it perhaps Gibbon with his Fall of Rome that so darkens the air of eight hundred years with a squalid dust-storm of demolition as to obscure our sight of the unquenched lights of the mind of man? Ruskin joins day to human day again.
 * Alice Meynell, John Ruskin (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1900), p. 262

 * Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?
 * Attributed to Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, 1781, upon receiving the second (or third, or possibly both) volume(s) of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the author. quoted by Sir Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National Biography, (1921), vol. 21, p. 1133

 * It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the infidel Gibbon.
 * John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), p. 5

 * Towards the end of the century, in the years 1776–88, a historian, the greatest of the century, as many believe, produced one of the most impressive books ever written on the ancient world – Edward Gibbon (1737–94), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six quarto volumes. The range of his reading in Latin and Greek widened and deepened during his years in Lausanne; he also admired Porson and defended him against attacks. Porson in turn wrote a splendid review of Gibbon's work. For Bentley Gibbon found the most appropriate epithet, "tremendous". It is clear, too, from his great work that his qualifications for writing it included an acquaintance with the history of scholarship.
 * Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850, Volume I (1976), p. 162

 * Porson...thought the Decline and Fall beyond all comparison the greatest literary production of the eighteenth century, and was in the habit of repeating long passages from it. Yet I have heard him say that “there could not be a better exercise for a schoolboy than to turn a page of it into English.”
 * Samuel Rogers, Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. To which is added Porsoniana (1856), pp. 302–303

 * He said the facts that made up the volume of narrative were unparalleled in atrociousness, and that nothing equal in criminality was to be traced, either in ancient or modern history, in the correct periods of Tacitus or the luminous page of Gibbon.
 * Richard Brinsley Sheridan, speech at the trial of Warren Hastings, reported in the Morning Chronicle (14 June 1788), quoted in Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings, in Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Vol. I, ed. Lord Sheffield (1796), p. 172, n

 * I have ten thousand apologies to make, for not having long ago returned you my best thanks for the very agreeable present you made me of the three last volumes of your History. I cannot express to you the pleasure it gives me to find, that by the universal assent of every man of taste and learning, whom I either know or correspond with, it sets you at the very head of the whole literary tribe at present existing in Europe.
 * Adam Smith to Gibbon (10 December 1788), quoted in Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Vol. II, ed. Lord Sheffield (1796), p. 215

 * Edward Gibbon...is the one irreplaceable English historian. What other 18th-century historian is still read, not only for his style, nor as a contemporary witness of events, but as an interpreter of past ages? Gibbon now seems much less dated than his great successors, Macaulay, Carlyle, Froude; nor can anyone, today, discuss the problem – the permanent problem – of the decline of the Roman Empire except in implicit dialogue with him.
 * Hugh Trevor-Roper, 'May Gibbon rise again', The Times (2 May 1987), p. 20

 * Gibbon was an exact and exacting scholar (hence his disdain for the French philosophes who subordinated scholarship to their philosophy). He read the latest articles, subscribed to the learned journals, cited and criticised his sources. His errors are remarkably few. Of course much has been written on the subject since his time. But his scholarship and his judgement can seldom be faulted.
 * Hugh Trevor-Roper, 'May Gibbon rise again', The Times (2 May 1987), p. 20

 * Gibbon's historical philosophy was...animated by...what we now call "civic humanism": that is, the conviction that the progress of society depends on a certain moral force: the "spirit" which, to Montesquieu, must animate the "laws" if history is not to be, as it often is, merely anarchical, "the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind". It was because he believed intensely in civic virtue that he deplored the attitude of the early Christians. When Roman civilisation was in danger, these men contracted out. They refused to serve the state and preferred to sit on pillars in the desert or waste their energies in sterile theological disputes. On the other hand, when the church, or churchmen, showed such a spirit, he would commend them. "Active virtue" was to be respected wherever it was expressed.
 * Hugh Trevor-Roper, 'May Gibbon rise again', The Times (2 May 1987), p. 20

 * Gibbon was not interested in religious doctrine, though he amused himself with its speculative refinements. But religion and Churches, he would admit, are a social and psychological necessity, and the particular forms which they take are important, for they can influence the progress or decline of civilization. Therefore the historical question he asked was, did the ideas of Christianity and the organization of the Church, as adapted to the Roman Empire, generate or stifle public spirit, freedom, and the advancement of knowledge and a plural society. His answer was that they stifled it. If Christianity had first been established in independent city-states like those of Greece, perhaps it would have assumed a different and more useful form – as it eventually did in the communes of Italy and, more successfully, in the Protestant cities of Switzerland. But the very fact of its establishment by imperial power, as an ideological support to that power, made it subservient to a centralized, monopolist system whose organization and absolutism, in its own formative period, it imitated and sustained.
 * Hugh Trevor-Roper, Introduction to Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.)

 * The penetration, solidity, and taste, that made you the first of historians, dear Sir, prevent my being surprised at your being the best writer of controversial pamphlets too. I have read you with more precipitation than such a work deserved, but I could not disobey you and detain it. Yet even in that hurry I could discern, besides a thousand beauties and strokes of wit, the inimitable eighty-third page, and the conscious dignity that you maintain throughout over your monkish antagonists. When you are so superior in argument, it would look like insensibility to the power of your reasoning, to select transient passages for commendation; and yet I must mention one that pleased me particularly, from the delicacy of the severity, and from its novelty too; it is, ‘Bold is not the word.’ This is the feathered arrow of Cupid, that is more formidable than the club of Hercules.
 * Horace Walpole to Gibbon on his Vindication (1779), quoted in The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford. Vol. X: 1777–1779, ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee (1904), pp. 367–368

 * Though what Gibbon calls ‘the curiosity of the public’ may have exhausted itself long since, the candid judgment of many generations and of almost every class of readers has confirmed the opinion formed at once by Gibbon's own age. His great work remains an enduring monument of research, an imperishable literary possession and one of the highest encouragements to intellectual endeavour that can be found in the history of letters.
 * Adolphus Ward, ‘Historians. II. Gibbon’, in A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller (eds.), The Cambridge History of English Literature, Volume X: The Age of Johnson (1913), p. 298

title: Edward Gibbon


text:
Thomas Haynes Bayly

Thomas Haynes Bayly (13 October 1797 – April 1839) was a popular miscellaneous writer best known for his songs.

Quotes

 * I've now got the music book ready, Do sit up and sing like a lady A recitative from Tancredi, And something about "Palpiti!" Sing forte when first you begin it, Piano the very next minute, They'll cry "What expression there's in it!" Don't sing English ballads to me!
 * Don't Sing English Ballads to Me; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 56.

 * We met,—'twas in a crowd.
 * We met, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Parodied by Thomas Hood: We met,—'twas in a mob.

 * Gayly the troubadour Touched his guitar.
 * Welcome me Home, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Why don't the men propose, Mamma? Why don't the men propose?
 * Why don't the Men propose?, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * She wore a wreath of roses The first night that we met.
 * She wore a Wreath, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Friends depart, and memory takes them To her caverns, pure and deep.
 * Teach me to forget, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Tell me the tales that to me were so dear, Long, long ago, long, long ago.
 * Long, long ago, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * The rose that all are praising Is not the rose for me.
 * The Rose that all are praising, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Oh pilot, 'tis a fearful night! There's danger on the deep.
 * The Pilot, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Fear not, but trust in Providence, Wherever thou may'st be.
 * The Pilot, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Absence makes the heart grow fonder: Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!
 * Isle of Beauty, st. 3, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I find that absence still increases love", Charles Hopkins, To C. C.; "Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it", James Howell, Familiar Letters, book i. sect. i. No. 6, Semper in absentes felicior aestus amantes—"Woman’s heart is ever fonder towards an absent lover", Propertius, II, 33c (tr. G. P. Goold)

 * The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly-branch shone on the old oak wall.
 * The Mistletoe Bough, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * Oh, I have roamed o'er many lands, And many friends I've met; Not one fair scene or kindly smile Can this fond heart forget.
 * Oh, steer my Bark to Erin's Isle, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * My fond affection thou hast seen, Then judge of my regret To think more happy thou hadst been If we had never met.
 * To my Wife, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

 * I'm saddest when I sing.
 * You think I have a merry heart, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I can’t sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even than I am", Artemus Ward, Lecture.

Psychæ (1828)
Psychæ; or, Songs on Butterflies &c. (Malton, 1828). Only a few copies printed for private distribution.
 * I'd be a butterfly born in a bower, Where roses and lilies and violets meet.
 * "I'd be a Butterfly", line 1; p. 2.

 * Those, who have wealth, must be watchful and wary; Power, alas! nought but misery brings!
 * "I'd be a Butterfly", line 13; p. 2..

 * Sure it is better, when summer is over To die when all fair things are fading away.
 * "I'd be a Butterfly", line 19; p. 2.

 * Oh no: we never mention her!   Her name is never heard; My lips are now forbid to speak    That once familiar word.
 * "Oh no: we never mention her", line 1; p. 20. Variant: Oh, no: we never mention him!

title: Thomas Haynes Bayly


text:
Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) was a poet and satirist of the Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents. Considered the foremost English poet of the early 18th century and a master of the heroic couplet, he is best known for satirical and discursive poetry.

 * See also
 * An Essay on Criticism (1711)
 * The Iliad of Homer (1715 to 1720)
 * The Rape of the Lock (1717)
 * Eloisa to Abelard (1717)
 * The Odyssey of Homer (1725)
 * The Dunciad (1728 to 1743)
 * Moral Essays (1731 to 1735)
 * An Essay on Man (1733 to 1734)
 * Imitations of Horace (1733 to 1738)

Quotes

A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground.'''
 * '''Happy the man whose wish and care
 * "Ode on Solitude", st. 1 (c. 1700)

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.'''
 * '''For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
 * "An Essay on Man"

Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.'''
 * '''Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
 * "Ode on Solitude", st. 5 (c. 1700)

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
 * A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
 * "An Essay on Criticism", (1709)

 * They dream in Courtship, but in Wedlock wake.
 * "The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), line 103

Can never be a mouse of any soul.
 * The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole
 * "The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), lines 298-299. Compare: "I hold a mouses wit not worth a leke, That hath but on hole for to sterten to", Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Wif of Bathes Prologue", line 6154; "The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken", George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum

And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
 * Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
 * "The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), line 369

 * Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.
 * Letter to Henry Cromwell (19 October 1709)

Pray tell me Sir, whose Dog are you?'''
 * 'I am his Highness' Dog at Kew'';
 * "Epigram. Engraved on the Collar of a Dog, which I gave to His Royal Highness" (1738)

God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.'''
 * '''Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
 * Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton

 * How vast a memory has Love!
 * "Sappho to Phaon", line 52 (1712)

 * Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of expiring victims, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there. It gives one the image of a giant's den in a romance, bestrewed with scattered heads and mangled limbs.
 * Spence's Anecdotes and The Guardian (21 May 1713); as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), p. 132

 * I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your own, heartily wishing the good, that is the quiet of my country, and hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
 * Letter to Edward Blount (27 August 1714); a similar expression in "Thoughts on Various Subjects" in Swift's Miscellanies (1727): Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.

The man had courage, was a sage, 'tis true, And lov'd his country.
 * The stoic husband was the glorious thing.
 * Epilogue to Rowe's Jane Shore (1714)

He has a husband that will make amends; He draws him gentle, tender, and forgiving, And sure such kind good creatures may be living.
 * Well, if our author in the wife offends
 * Epilogue to Rowe's Jane Shore (1714)

For sober, studious days!
 * Luxurious lobster-nights, farewell,
 * "A Farewell to London" (1715), st. 1

Thy fools no more I'll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!
 * Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell!
 * "A Farewell to London" (1715), st. 12

 * I am growing fit, I hope, for a better world, of which light of the sun is but a shadow: for I doubt not but God's works here, are what comes nearest to his works there; and that a true relish of the beauties of nature is the most easy preparation and gentlest transition to an enjoyment of those of heaven; as on the contrary a true town life of hurry, confusion, noise, slander, and dissension, is a fort of apprenticeship to hell and its furies... The separation of my soul and body is what I could think of with less pain; for I sm very sure he that made it will take care of it, and in whatever state he pleases it shall be, that state must be right; but I cannot think without tears of beingseparated from my friends, when their condition is so douubtful, that they may want even such assistance as mine
 * In a 1715 letter (LXXVII), as found in Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope: And Several of His Friends. 1737

 * I think it was a generous thought, and one that fow'd from an exalted mind, that it was not improbable but God might be delighted with the various methods of worshipping him, which divided the whole world.
 * Letter, February 10, 1715, 16

Something to blame, and something to commend.
 * Each finding like a friend
 * "Epistle to Mr. Jervas" (1717), lines 21–22

Or gave his father grief but when he died.
 * Who ne'er knew joy but friendship might divide,
 * "Epitaph on the Hon. S. Harcourt" (1720)

 * Methinks God has punish'd the Avaritious as he often punishes sinners, in their own way, in the ver sin itself: the thrist of gain was their crime, that thrist continued became their punishment and ruin. As for the few who have the good fortune to remain with half of what they imagined they had (among whom is your humble servantl, I would have them sensible of their felicity, and convinced of the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, who, after half his estate was swallowed by the Directors of those days, resolv'd, that half to be more than the whole.
 * In his letter to Atterbury Bishop of Rochester. Sept. 23. 1720

Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue.
 * Such were the notes thy once lov'd poet sung,
 * "Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer" preface to Thomas Parnell's Poems on Several Occasions (1721)

 * Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear.
 * "Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford and Mortimer" (1721)

 * "Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed" was the ninth Beatitude which a man of wit (who, like a man of wit, was a long time in gaol) added to the eighth.
 * Letter, written in collaboration with John Gay, to William Fortescue (23 September 1725).
 * A similar remark was made in a letter to John Gay (16 October 1727): "I have many years magnify'd in my own mind, and repeated to you a ninth Beatitude, added to the eight in the Scripture: Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

 * Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long Absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: Absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer.
 * Letter, written in collaboration with Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, to Jonathan Swift (14 December 1725)

 * Know, sense, like charity, begins at home.
 * "Umbra", first published in Miscellanies (1727)

So firm, yet soft; so strong, yet so refin'd; Heav'n, as its purest gold, by tortures try'd; The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died.
 * So unaffected, so compos'd a mind;
 * "Epitaph on Mrs. Corbet" (1730)

 * 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.
 * Letter, written in collaboration with Dr John Arbuthnot, to Jonathan Swift (December 5, 1732) upon the death of John Gay.

In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child.
 * Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;
 * "Epitaph on Gay" (1733), lines 1-2. Reported in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 818. Compare: "Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child", John Dryden, Elegy on Mrs. Killegrew, line 70

 * The famous Lord Hallifax (though so much talked of) was rather a pretender to taste, than really possessed of it.—When I had finished the two or three first books of my translation of the Iliad, that lord, "desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house." Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there at the reading.—In four or five places, Lord Hallifax stopped me very civilly; and with a speech, each time of much the same kind: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me.—Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a little at your leisure.—I am sure you can give it a little turn."—I returned from Lord Hallifax's with Dr. Garth, in his chariot; and as we were going along, was saying to the doctor, that my lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty, by such loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it was that offended his lordship in either of them.—Garth laughed heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long enough acquainted with Lord Hallifax, to know his way yet: that I need not puzzle myself in looking those places over and over when I got home. "All you need do, (said he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Hallifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those passages; and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."—I followed his advice; waited on Lord Hallifax some time after: said, I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed[;] read them to him exactly as they were at first; and his lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, "Ay now, Mr. Pope, they are perfectly right! nothing can be better."
 * Remark (1734?) quoted in Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [published from the original papers; with notes, and a life of the author, by Samuel Weller Singer]; "Spence's Anecdotes", Section IV. 1734...36. pp. 134–136

The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.'''
 * '''For he lives twice who can at once employ
 * Imitation of Martial, reported in Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence (1737), Vol. V, p. 232; The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 117. Compare: "Ampliat ætatis spatium sibi vir bonus; hoc est Vivere bis vita posse priore frui" (Translated: "The good man prolongs his life; to be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice"), Martial, X, 237.; "Thus would I double my life's fading space; For he that runs it well, runs twice his race", Abraham Cowley, Discourse XI, Of Myself, stanza xi.

 * 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.
 * Remark (1738?) quoted in Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [published from the original papers; with notes, and a life of the author, by Samuel Weller Singer]; "Spence's Anecdotes", Section IV. 1737...39. p. 200

 * What terrible moments does one feel after one has engaged for a large work! In the beginning of my translating the Iliad, I wished any body would hang me a hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first, that I often used to dream of it; and do so sometimes still. When I fell into the method of translating 30 or 40 verses before I got up, and piddled with it the rest of the morning, it went on easily enough; and when I was thoroughly got into the way of it, I did the rest with pleasure.
 * Remark (1739?) quoted in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [arranged, with notes, by the late Edmund Malone], pp. 28–29

We thrive at Westminster on fools like you; 'T was a fat oyster,—live in peace,—adieu.
 * There, take (says Justice), take ye each a shell:
 * Reported in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, sixth edition (Yale University Press, 1970), p. 832: "Verbatim from Boileau", written c. 1740, published 1741.. Compare: "Tenez voilà", dit-elle, "à chacun une écaille, Des sottises d'autrui nous vivons au Palais; Messieurs, l'huître étoit bonne. Adieu. Vivez en paix", Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux, Epître II. (à M. l'Abbé des Roches).

Who dare to love their country and be poor.'''
 * '''Let such, such only tread this sacred floor,
 * Inscription on the entrance to his grotto in Twickenham, published in "Verses on a Grotto by the River Thames at Twickenham, composed of Marbles, Spars and Minerals", line 14, (written 1740, published 1741); also quoted as "Who dared to love their country, and be poor."

 * The Iliad took me up six years, and during that time, and particularly the first part of it, I was often under great pain and apprehensions. Though I conquered the thoughts of it in the day, they would frighten me in the night. I dreamed often of being engaged in a long journey, and that I should never get to the end of it. This made so strong an impression upon me, that I sometimes dream of it still; of being engaged in that translation, of having got about half way through it, and being embarrassed, and under dread of never completing it.
 * Remark (1743?) quoted in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [arranged, with notes, by the late Edmund Malone], pp. 53–54

They had no poet, and they died. In vain they schem'd, in vain they bled! They had no poet, and are dead.
 * Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
 * Odes, Book iv, Ode 9, reported in William Warburton, The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq (1751) p. 31

And make two lovers happy.'''
 * '''Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
 * Martinus Scriblerus on the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Chap. xi, reported in William Warburton, The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq (1751) p. 196

 * Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms.
 * Pope's reply when told by his physician that he was better, on the morning of his death (30 May 1744), as quoted by Owen Ruffhead in The Life of Alexander Pope; With a Critical Essay on His Writings and Genius (1769), p. 475

Pastorals (1709)
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade: Where'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.
 * Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
 * Summer, line 73

 * Say, is not absence death to those who love?
 * Autumn

And liquid amber drop from every thorn.
 * Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn,
 * Autumn, line 36

So dies her love, and so my hopes decay.
 * The garlands fade, the vows are worn away;
 * Autumn, line 70

An Essay on Criticism (1711)
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
 * True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

 * To err is human, to forgive divine.

The Temple of Fame (1711)
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.
 * There various news I heard of love and strife,
 * Lines 449-458

Scarce any Tale was sooner heard than told; And all who told it, added something new, And all who heard it, made Enlargements too, In ev'ry Ear it spread, on ev'ry Tongue it grew.'''
 * '''The flying Rumours gather'd as they roll'd,
 * Lines 468-472

She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all.'''
 * '''Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call;
 * Line 513

O grant an honest fame, or grant me none!'''
 * '''Unblemish'd let me live, or die unknown;
 * Closing line

The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame''': Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
 * '''Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
 * Stanza 1

Sister spirit, come away!
 * Hark! they whisper; angels say,

 * Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

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?'''
 * '''The world recedes; it disappears!
 * Note: the last two lines are a quote of 1 Corinthians 15:55.

Windsor Forest (1713)
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.
 * Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
 * Line 11

But as the world, harmoniously confus'd, Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree.
 * Not chaos-like together crush'd and bruis'd,
 * Line 13

A mighty hunter, and his prey was man.
 * Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began
 * Line 61

The clam'rous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare, They fall, and leave their little lives in air.
 * Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath,
 * Line 131

 * From old Belerium to the northern main.
 * Line 316

Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato (1713)
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.
 * To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
 * Line 1

And greatly falling with a falling state. While Cato gives his little senate laws, What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
 * A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
 * Line 21; Pope also uses the reference, "Like Cato, give his little Senate laws", in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), Prologue to Imitations of Horace.

 * Ignobly vain, and impotently great.
 * Line 29

The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717)

 * I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken.
 * Preface

 * 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.
 * Preface

 * 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.
 * Preface

Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
 * What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade
 * Line 1. Compare: "What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew, Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?", Ben Jonson, Elegy on the Lady Jane Pawlet

To bear too tender, or too firm a heart, To act a lover's or a Roman's part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky, For those who greatly think, or bravely die?'''
 * '''Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well?
 * Line 6

The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.
 * Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
 * Line 13

And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates.
 * On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
 * Line 37

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' good, or melt at others' woe.'''
 * '''Lo these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd,
 * Line 45. Compare Pope's The Odyssey of Homer, Book XVIII, line 269

By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned.
 * By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
 * Line 51

To midnight dances and the public show.
 * And bear about the mockery of woe
 * Line 57

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!
 * How loved, how honored once, avails thee not,
 * Line 71

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

 * Published in Swift's Miscellanies (1727).

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

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

 * 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.

 * 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.

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

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

 * 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.

 * 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.

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

 * 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.

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

 * The most positive men are the most credulous...

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

 * Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.
 * From Roscoe's edition of Pope, vol. v. p. 376; originally printed in Motte's Miscellanies (1727). In the edition of 1736 Pope says, "I must own that the prose part (the Thought on Various Subjects), at the end of the second volume, was wholly mine. January, 1734".

Moral Essays (1731–1735)

 * Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
 * Epistle I, To Lord Cobham (1734), line 150

The Universal Prayer (1738)
In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!'''
 * '''Father of all! in every age,
 * Stanza 1

Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good And that myself am blind.
 * Thou Great First Cause, least understood
 * Stanza 2

Left free the human will.
 * And binding Nature fast in fate,
 * Stanza 3

Presume Thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land On each I judge Thy foe.'''
 * '''Let not this weak, unknowing hand
 * Stanza 7

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

To right the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.'''
 * '''Teach me to feel another's woe,
 * Stanza 10; this extends upon the theme evident in the lines of Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene (1596), Book V, Canto ii, Stanza 42: "Who will not mercie unto others show, How can he mercy ever hope to have?"

Attributed

 * Passions...are the gales of life...
 * As quoted by Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke in a letter to Jonathan Swift (29 March 1730)

 * This is the Jew That Shakespeare drew.
 * As quoted in various reports, including Charles Wells Moulton, The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors (1901), p. 342; William Dunlap, The Life of George Frederick Cooke (1815), p. 26 (quoting an apparently contemporaneous journal account by the subject). Bartlett's Quotations, 10th edition (1919), reports that on the 14th of February, 1741, Macklin established his fame as an actor in the character of Shylock, in the "Merchant of Venice". Macklin's performance of this character so forcibly struck a gentleman in the pit that he, as it were involuntarily, exclaimed,— “This is the Jew That Shakespeare drew!” It has been said that this gentleman was Mr. Pope, and that he meant his panegyric on Macklin as a satire against Lord Lansdowne", Biographia Dramatica, vol. i. part II. p. 469.

 * True politeness consists in the being easy one-self, and making every body about one as easy as we can.
 * Statement of 1739, as quoted in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence, p. 286.
 * Variant reported in Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men (1887) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 451: "True politeness consists in being easy one's self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can."

Misattributed

 * A god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature.
 * Isaac Newton: Principia Mathematica (1687); Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy, Rule IV

 * A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
 * Une oeuvre où il y a des théories est comme un objet sur lequel on laisse la marque du prix.
 * Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, part VII: Time Regained, chapter III, "An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes" (French version and English translation).

 * Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
 * Le génie enfante, le goût conserve. Le goût est le bon sens du génie; sans le goût, le génie n'est qu'une sublime folie.
 * François-René de Chateaubriand, in Essai sur la littérature anglaise (1836): Modèles classiques.

 * You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come; Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.
 * Credited as Epigram: An Empty House (1727), or On a Dull Writer; alternately attributed to Jonathan Swift in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303.

 * Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain. Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise! Each stamps its image as the other flies!
 * Samuel Rogers, in The Pleasures of Memory (1792), Part

 * Never find fault with the absent.
 * Absenti nemo non nocuisse velit.
 * Sextus Propertius, Elegies, II, xix, 32, also translated: "Let no one be willing to speak ill of the absent".

 * The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
 * Heraclitus, Fragments, 54; and ; also translated in such variants as:
 * The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one
 * The hidden harmony is better than the open one.

 * The sick in body call for aid: the sick In mind are covetous of more disease; And when at worst, they dream themselves quite well. To know ourselves diseased, is half our cure.
 * Edward Young, "Night Thoughts," (1742-1745) Part IX

 * What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
 * George Dennison Prentice, in Prenticeana (1860)

Quotes about Pope

 * The most beautiful of poets.
 * Lord Byron, Diary, 4 January 1821

 * I look upon a proper appreciation of Pope as a touchstone of taste.
 * Lord Byron, letter to Octavius Gilchrist (5 September 1821), in Byron: A Self-Portrait (1950), p. 665

 * The Iliad and the Odyssey, in his hands, have no more the air of antiquity than if he had himself invented them.
 * William Cowper, "Critical Remarks on Pope's Homer", in The Edinburgh Magazine for September 1785, p. 165

 * A young, squab, short gentleman, whose outward form, though it should be that of downright monkey, would not differ so much from human shape as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding. ... As there is no creature in nature so venomous, there is nothing so stupid and so impotent as a hunch-back'd toad. ... This little author may extol the ancients as much and as long as he pleases, but he has reason to thank the good gods that he was born a modern. For had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his poems,—the life of half a day.
 * John Dennis, Reflections Critical and Satyrical, upon a Late Rhapsody, Call'd, An Essay upon Criticism (1711)

 * The little gentleman ... with a most comical and unparalleled assurance, has undertaken to translate Homer from Greek, of which he does not know one word, into English, which he understands almost as little.
 * John Dennis, Remarks upon Mr. Pope's Translation of Homer (1717)

 * Who is this Pope that I hear so much about? I cannot discover what is his merit. Why will not my subjects write in prose?
 * King George II, as quoted in Sir James Prior's Life of Edmond Malone (London, 1860), p. 369

 * Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but dared the judgement of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from others, he shewed none to himself. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven.
 * Samuel Johnson, The Life of Pope (1781)

 * Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the qualities that constitute genius. He had Invention, by which new trains of events are formed and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in The Rape of the Lock, and by which extrinsick and adventitious embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject, as in the Essay on Criticism; he had Imagination, which strongly impresses on the writer's mind and enables him to convey to the reader the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of passion, as in his Eloisa, Windsor Forest, and the Ethick Epistles; he had Judgement, which selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and, by separating the essence of things from its concomitants, often makes the representation more powerful than the reality; and he had colours of language always before him ready to decorate his matter with every grace of elegant expression, as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful multiplicity of Homer's sentiments and descriptions.
 * Samuel Johnson, The Life of Pope (1781)

 * The verses, when they were written, resemble nothing so much as spoonfuls of boiling oil, ladled out by a fiendish monkey at an upstairs window upon such passers-by whom the wretch had a grudge against.
 * Lytton Strachey, Pope: The Leslie Stephen Lecture for 1925 (pamphlet, 1925)

But with a sigh, I wish it mine: When he can in one couplet fix More sense than I can do in six: It gives me such a jealous fit, I cry, Pox take him, and his wit.
 * In Pope, I cannot read a line,
 * Jonathan Swift, Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731)

 * He is in my opinion the most elegant, the most correct poet; and at the same time the most harmonious...that England ever gave birth to.
 * Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation translated by John Lockman (1733), p. 215

 * Of all his works he was most proud of his garden.
 * Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, 2nd edition, Vol. 4 (London, 1782), p. 295

 * There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
 * Oscar Wilde, as quoted in Harford Montgomery Hyde's The annotated Oscar Wilde (1982), p. 450

 * As far as Pope goes, he succeeds; but his Homer is not Homer, but Pope.
 * William Wordsworth, in Memoirs of William Wordsworth by Christopher Wordsworth, Vol. II (London, 1851), Chap. LXIII, p. 470

title: Alexander Pope