Alexander Pope

Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest. The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

Know thy own point: this kind, this due degreeOf blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.

We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives the

Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.

Nature to all things fixed the limits fitAnd wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.As on the land while here the ocean gains.In other parts it leaves wide sandy plainsThus in the soul while memory prevails,The solid power of understanding failsWhere beams of warm imagination play,The memory's soft figures melt awayOne science only will one genius fit,So vast is art, so narrow human witNot only bounded to peculiar arts,But oft in those confined to single partsLike kings, we lose the conquests gained before,By vain ambition still to make them moreEach might his several province well command,Would all but stoop to what they understand.

For forms of Government let fools contest. Whate'er is best administered is best.

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescrib'd, their present state; From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer Being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play? Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food, And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n; Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall.

Then say not man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;. Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought.

Know then thyself; presume not God to scan,The proper study of mankind is Man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,And too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;In doubt his mind or body to prefer;Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err.Alike in ignorance, his reason such,Whether he thinks too little or too much.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.