Spiritual Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on ‘Virtue’s Prize’)

“What nothing earthly gives or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy,
Is Virtue's prize. A better would you fix?
Then give humility a coach and six,
Justice a conqueror's sword, or truth a gown,
Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.
Weak, foolish man! will Heav'n reward us there
With the same trash mad mortals wish for here?”—English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), “An Essay on Man” (1733)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on God’s Absolution and ‘This Eternal Sleep’)

“All is calm in this eternal sleep;
Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,
Ev’n superstition loses ev’ry fear:
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here.”— English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717)

Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on the Obliviousness of Fools)

“Out with it, Dunciad: let the secret pass—
That secret to each fool—that he's an ass.
The truth once told (and whereby should we lie?),
The queen of Midas slept, and so may I.
You think this cruel? Take it for a rule,
No creature smarts so little as a fool.”—English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on Man’s Purposes and God’s)

“In human works, though labour'd on with pain, 
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; 
In God's, one single can its end produce; 
Yet serves to second too some other use. 
So man, who here seems principal alone, 
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, 
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.”—English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), “An Essay on Man” (1734)

Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on Why ‘Strength of Mind is Exercise’)

“In lazy apathy let Stoics boast

Their virtue fix'd, 'tis fix'd as in a frost;

Contracted all, retiring to the breast;

But strength of mind is exercise, not rest:

The rising tempest puts in act the soul,

Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.”—English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), “An Essay on Man: Epistle II” (1733)

Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on Authors and Aging)

“It is the rust we value, not the gold;

Authors, like coins, grow dear, as they grow old.” —English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace (1733-1738)

Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on the Reign of Chaos and Division)

“Joy to great Chaos! Let Division reign:

Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence,

Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense:

One Trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage,

Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage;

To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,

And all thy yawning daughters cry, encore.” —English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), The Dunciad (1728)

Pope wrote his mock epic (one of my favorite long poems) about the baleful consequences of incompetence in the arts. 

But today, “chaos” and “division” describe a wider landscape—beginning in the "ranting stage" of the electronic culture, a vast black hole of inventive, hatred, and untruths, with its now-dimmed light bouncing toward the world of politics, which in turn reflects it back toward that hole, with the light growing ever fainter as it ricochets. 

Pope’s apocalyptic finale is of Creation reversed, and so it feels at times today, as the wider understanding heralded by God-given reason is gradually obscured by opportunists through polarizing propaganda.

Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on Old Friends)

“Content with little, I can piddle here 

On brocoli and mutton round the year; 

But ancient friends (tho’ poor, or out of play) 

That touch my bell, I cannot turn away.” —English poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744), Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace Imitated: The Second Satire of the Second Book of Horace