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.
— Alexander PopeThoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Use itGS4 on honesty; one lie demands many more to sustain it.
Quotes / Thinkers / Alexander Pope
Thinker · 12 quotes
Alexander Pope quotes for UPSC
12 sourced quotes by Alexander Pope on education & knowledge, religion, tolerance & secularism, integrity & honesty, character & virtue, compassion & empathy, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
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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.
— Alexander PopeThoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Use itLife: shallow people make the most noise.
Teach me to feel another's woe, To right the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.
— Alexander PopeStanza 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
Use itGS4 on empathy and mercy; feel others' pain and show the mercy you seek.
Party is the madness of many, for the gain of a few.
— Alexander PopeFrom 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
Use itEssay on partisanship; party spirit benefits few at many's cost.
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
— Alexander PopeEpistle I, To Lord Cobham (1734), line 150
Use itGS2 on early childhood care and education; early habits shape adults.
A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
— Alexander Pope"An Essay on Criticism" (1709)
Use itEssay on half-knowledge and misinformation; shallow learning intoxicates, deep learning sobers.
Not chaos-like together crush'd and bruis'd, But as the world, harmoniously confus'd, Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree.
— Alexander PopeLine 13
Use itGS1/Essay on unity in diversity; harmony amid difference.
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
— Alexander PopeAn Essay on Man (1734)
Use itEssay on religion; right conduct matters more than form of faith.
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.
— Alexander PopeLetter, February 10, 1715, 16
Use itEssay on religious pluralism; diverse modes of worship may all please God.
The flying Rumours gather'd as they roll'd, 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.
— Alexander PopeLines 468-472
Use itEssay on fake news; rumours grow with every retelling.
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.
— Alexander PopeThoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Use itInterview/GS4: admitting a mistake shows growth.
To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.
— Alexander PopeThoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Use itGS4 on anger management; anger punishes ourselves for others' faults.