Essai sur l'homme: poëme philosophique par Alexandre Pope, en cinq langues, savoir; anglois, latin, italien, françois & allemand

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chez Amand König, 1762 - 347 pages

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Page 13 - Created half to rise, and half to fall: Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd; The glory jest, and riddle of the world!
Page 11 - Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent : Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns : To him no high, no low, no great, no small ; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
Page 44 - Know then this truth (enough for man to know) 'Virtue alone is happiness below.
Page 11 - All discord, harmony not understood ; All partial evil, universal good : And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, WHATEVER is, is RIGHT.
Page 5 - Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate All but the page prescribed, 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 ? Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Page 3 - Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to man.
Page 13 - With 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...
Page 6 - Yet simple Nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To Be, contents his natural desire, He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Page 45 - Pursues that chain which links th' immense design, Joins Heaven and Earth, and mortal and divine ; Sees, that no being any bliss can know, But touches some above, and some below ; Learns from this union of the rising whole The first, last purpose of the human soul ; And knows where faith, law, morals, all began, • All end in love of God, and love of man.
Page 42 - Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave, Is but the more a fool, the more a knave. Who noble ends by noble means obtains, Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains, Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed Like Socrates, that man is great indeed. What's fame? a fancy'd life in others' breath, A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death.

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