Browse 7 quotations connecting Alexander Pope with Humility, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock.
“To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Error is treated as ordinary human limitation, while forgiveness requires an additional act of generosity.
Source note: An Essay on Criticism, Part II; Pope warns that shallow learning can produce premature confidence before deeper study tempers judgment.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
Partial knowledge can produce misplaced confidence; the warning favors deeper study over shallow certainty.
Source note: An Essay on Criticism, Part II; Pope warns that shallow learning can produce premature confidence before deeper study tempers judgment.
“A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing.”
Partial knowledge can create confidence before understanding has become deep enough to recognize its limits.
Source note: An Essay on Criticism; Pope follows the line with the image of drinking deeply from the Pierian spring.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
The line warns that confidence without judgment can push people into situations that more thoughtful people approach cautiously.
Source note: An Essay on Criticism, Part III; Pope warns against reckless confidence and poor judgment in critics.
“For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.”
Confidence without sufficient judgment can make haste look like courage when caution would be wiser.
Source note: An Essay on Criticism; original capitalization is lightly normalized elsewhere on the site.
“Trust not your self; but your defects to know, make use of ev’ry friend—and ev’ry foe.”
Pope treats criticism from both allies and opponents as information that can expose blind spots.
Source note: An Essay on Criticism, in the passage warning against pride in judgment.
“How vain are all these glories, all our pains, Unless good sense preserve what beauty gains:”
Clarissa’s speech argues that appearance and social admiration are unstable unless judgment and character give them something more durable to rest on.
Source note: The Rape of the Lock, Canto V; spoken by Clarissa in a mock-heroic social satire, so the speaker and comic setting remain part of the source context.