Elections have consequences

 Fools into the notion fall,

That vice or virtue there is none at all:

Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain,

'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

When you surround yourself with toadies and sycophants

 Some valuing those of their own side, or mind,

Still make themselves the measure of mankind:

Fondly we think we honour merit then,

When we but praise ourselves in other men.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

There is safety in solitude

School of the Vestals, a painting by Hector Leroux, 1880

 How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

What the Christ of faith can do in every generation

 

 He from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,

And sets the passions on the side of truth;

Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,

And pours each human virtue in the heart.

-- Alexander Pope 

Human flailing, divine economy

 

 

 In human works, though labour'd on with pain,

A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;

In God's, one single can its ends produce,

Yet serves to second too some other use.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

 

Decadence 101

 Taught, half by reason, half by mere decay,

To welcome death, and calmly pass away.

 

-- Alexander Pope 

This day be bread and peace my lot . . .

 

 This day, be bread and peace my lot;

All else beneath the sun

Thou know'st if best bestow'd or not,

And let thy will be done.

-- Alexander Pope 

Being king is not the thing

 Condition, circumstance is not the thing;

Bliss is the same in subject or in king. 

 

-- Alexander Pope 

Infant woe awaits us all

 There oft are heard the notes of infant woe,

The short thick sob, loud scream, and shriller squall.

 

-- Alexander Pope

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish?

 Why the **** does everyone swear all the ******* time?

 

The mind which wrote this essay is a busy ditch, for which unsurprisingly the old concept of the vulgar is unimagined country. Accordingly, when it tires of being crass it is capable only of infelicity:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A nodding beam or pig of lead,

May hurt the very ablest head.

 

-- Alexander Pope

In debt beyond the power of payment

 In vain at court the bankrupt pleads his cause;

His thankless country leaves him to her laws.

-- Alexander Pope

Impenetrable mysteries

 

 Like buoys, that never sink into the flood,

On learning's surface we but lie and nod.

-- Alexander Pope, The Dunciad

Polyphemus the inhospitable

 His ample maw with human carnage fill'd,

A milky deluge next the giant swill'd.

 

-- Alexander Pope

Passion has a way of suddenly appearing and blowing one off course

18th century compass card

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On life's vast ocean diversly we sail;

Reason the card, but passion is the gale.

-- Alexander Pope

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow

What differ more, you cry, than crown and cowl?

I'll tell you, friend, a wise man and a fool.

-- Alexander Pope

The 19th Amendment has been the deciding factor in America's leftward lurch from the early 20th century

 

Men, some to business, some to pleasure take,

But ev'ry woman is at heart a rake.

-- Alexander Pope

There is no need of censorship in a Christian society, because its citizens censor themselves

There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men, that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.

-- Alexander Pope

The vortex of death has swallowed 109 billion and counting

 

https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/

The gath'ring number, as it moves along,

Involves a vast involuntary throng;

Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,

Roll in her vortex, and her power confess.

 

-- Alexander Pope

The dead are wise, but they are taciturn

Silence; coeval with eternity,

Thou wert ere nature first began to be,

'Twas one vast nothing all, and all slept fast in thee.

-- Alexander Pope

On having the mere form of antiquity, but lacking the sense thereof

Some by old words to fame have made pretence;

Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense !

-- Alexander Pope