What does this quote mean?

“What mighty contests rise from trivial things,”

The mock-heroic opening announces the poem’s central comic method: treating a small social quarrel with the scale and language of epic conflict.

Source note: The Rape of the Lock, Canto I, expanded five-canto version; the line is part of Pope’s mock-heroic invocation and should be read as satire.

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

The line praises compression: saying less can sharpen meaning when the words that remain do real work.

Source note: Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2; Polonius says this while promising the King and Queen he will be brief, immediately before continuing at comic length. The dramatic irony is part of the line’s context.

“Law is reason without desire.”

Good law is idealized as judgment governed by reason rather than by the changing appetites or personal passions of an individual ruler.

Source note: Politics, Book III, William Ellis translation; the line appears in a discussion of law and political rule.

“Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”

The Queen’s order makes judicial procedure absurd by reversing its basic sequence, turning arbitrary authority into unmistakable nonsense.

Source note: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 12; the Queen interrupts the trial with the reversed command.

“All warfare is based on deception.”

Strategy depends partly on managing what an opponent believes about intentions, strength, timing, and position rather than revealing every fact directly.

Source note: The Art of War, Chapter I “Laying Plans,” Lionel Giles translation (1910).

“Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?”

The rhetorical question mocks disproportionate retaliation by comparing an elaborate punishment with the crushing of something slight and fragile.

Source note: Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, Sporus passage; the famous image occurs inside a sharp personal satire, so the hostile literary context is retained.