5 quotations linked to The Rape of the Lock by or associated with Alexander Pope, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Social conflict, beauty, reputation, good sense, composure, merit, gossip and comic disproportion.
Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.
“At ev'ry word a reputation dies.”
Pope compresses the destructive speed of fashionable gossip into a comic line about reputations being damaged in ordinary conversation.
Source note: The Rape of the Lock, Canto III; the line occurs in a satirical description of fashionable social talk rather than as literal reportage.
“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.
“Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”
The line contrasts immediate visual attraction with the more durable appeal of character or merit.
Source note: The Rape of the Lock, Canto V; final line of Clarissa’s speech in the represented text, followed by the narrator’s note that her audience does not applaud.
“What then remains but well our pow'r to use, And keep good-humour still whate'er we lose?”
Within Clarissa’s speech, the practical response to inevitable loss is to use one’s capacities well and preserve composure rather than trying to make change impossible.
Source note: The Rape of the Lock, Canto V; Clarissa speaks before the poem immediately returns to comic battle, a contrast that keeps the moral counsel inside the satire.
“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.