- P -
- Time's corrosive dewdrop eats
The giant warrior to a crust
Of earth in earth and rust in rust.
Francis Turner Palgrave, from A Danish Barrow
- Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun...
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?
Dorothy Parker, from General Review of the Sex Situation
- Why is it that no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
Dorothy Parker, from General Review of the Sex Situation
- Prince, a precept I'd leave for you,
Coined in Eden existing yet;
Skirt the parlor, and shun the zoo--
Women and elephants never forget.
Dorothy Parker, from Ballade of the Unfortunate Mammals
- My own dear love, he is all my world,—
And I wish I’d never met him.
Dorothy Parker, from Love Song
- So in the last moments of wakefulness
I re-create that lost world
whose textures are like braille
beneath my fingertips . . . .
Linda Pastan, from Notes to My Mother, Part 9, 13-16
- To be the other woman
is to be a season
that is always about to end . . . .
Linda Pastan, from Circe, 37-39
- As if revision were
the purest form of love.
Linda Pastan, from Vermilion, 15-16
- Eve would be the mother
of Newton and Bohr.
Linda Pastan, from Fruit of the Tree, 17-18
- Your lips have splashed my dull house with print of flowers
Kenneth Patchen, from As We Are So Wonderfully
- There's no erring twice in love and war.
Pomfret, from Love Triumphant Over Reason
- A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Criticism
- 'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Criticism
- Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.
Alexander Pope, from Essay on Man
- For Forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best:
For Modes of Faith, let graceless zealots fight;
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right:
In Faith and Hope the world will disagree,
But all Mankind's concern is Charity:
All must be false that thwart this One great End,
And All of God, that bless Mankind or mend.
Alexander Pope, from Essay on Man
- First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same;
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Criticism
- True Wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed . . . .
Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Criticism
- Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Criticism
- I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Alexander Pope, from Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness
- Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Alexander Pope, from Essay on Criticism, Part II
- True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
Alexander Pope, from Essay on Criticism, Part II
- All Nature is but Art unknown to thee;
All chance direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
Alexander Pope, from Essay on Man, Epistle I
- Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Alexander Pope, from Essay on Man, Epistle II
- See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again:
All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of Matter born,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Alexander Pope, from Essay on Man
- Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipt me in ink, my Parents' or my own?
As yet a Child, not yet a Fool to Fame,
I lisp'd in Numbers, for the Numbers came.
Alexander Pope, from Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
- Late as it is, I put my self to school,
And feel some comfort, not to be a fool.
Alexander Pope, from Imitations of Horace, Epistle I
- No more tradition's chains shall bind us.
Arise, ye slaves! No more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations,
We have been naught, we shall be all.
Eugene Pottier, from The Internationale
- Our outward act is prompted from within,
And from the sinner's mind procedes the sin.
Matthew Prior, from Henry and Emma
- Our hopes, like towering falcons, aim
At objects in an airy height;
The little pleasure of the game
Is from afar to view the flight.
Matthew Prior
- Let him be kept from paper, pen and ink,
So may he cease to write, and learn to think.
Matthew Prior, from To a Person Who Wrote Ill. On Same Person
- One by one the sands are flowing,
One by one the moments fall;
Some are coming, come are going;
Do not strive to grasp them all.
Adelaide Ann Proctor, from One by One
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