Date: 1715-1720

"Far, far too dear to ev'ry mortal Breast, / Sweet to the Soul, as Hony to the Taste; / Gath'ring like Vapours of a noxious kind / From fiery Blood, and dark'ning all the Mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733

"There St. John mingles with my friendly Bowl, / The Feast of Reason and the Flow of Soul."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733

"I love to pour out all myself, as plain / As downright Shippen, or as old Montagne. / In them, as certain to be lov'd as seen, / The Soul stood forth, nor kept a Thought within; / In me what Spots (for Spots I have) appear, / Will prove at least the Medium must be clear."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms, / Pours fierce Ambition in a Caesar's mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1734

"Our Depths who fathoms, or our Shallows finds? / Quick Whirls, and shifting Eddies, of our minds?"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"Self-Love but serves the virtuous Mind to wake, / As the small Pebble stirs the peaceful Lake, / The Centre mov'd, a Circle strait succeeds, / Another still, and still another spreads."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737

"My faults will not be hid from you, and perhaps it is no dispraise to me that they will not: the cleanness and purity of one's mind is never better proved, than in discovering its own faults at first view; as when a stream shows the dirt at its bottom, it shows also the transparency of the water."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737, 1743

"The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by shewing its Faults; as when a Stream discovers the Dirt at the bottom, it convinceth us of the transparency and purity of the Water."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737, 1743

"It is with narrow-soul'd People as with narrow-neck'd Bottles: The less they have in them the more noise they make in pouring it out."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737

"You see 'tis with weak heads as with weak stomachs, they immediately throw out what they received last; and what they read floats upon the surface of their mind, like oil upon water, without incorporating."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)