Browse 7 quotations connecting Alexander Pope with Humility, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
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.
An Essay on Criticism, Part III; Pope joins good nature and good sense before contrasting ordinary human error with the higher moral act of forgiveness.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
Partial knowledge can produce misplaced confidence; the warning favors deeper study over shallow certainty.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Rape of the Lock, Canto V, lines 15–16 in Pope’s 1717 revision; spoken by Clarissa. Her moralizing speech (Canto V lines 7–36) was added in 1717, so the inherited 1714 source year is corrected to 1717. The reviewed evidence opens the 1717 Canto V scan start; the exact couplet is independently preserved in the complete final-form text.
