’T is education forms the common mind:
Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

A wise physician, skill’d our wounds to heal, is more than armies to the public weal.

Alike fantastic, if too new, or old;
Be not the first by whom the new are try'd,
Not yet the last to lay the old aside.

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.”

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Fine sense and exalted sense are not half as useful as common sense.

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.

Go, wondrous creature, mount where science guides.
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the sun;
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule,
Then drop into thyself and be a fool.

Go, wondrous creature! mount where Science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the Sun.

Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And though no science, fairly worth the seven.

Good-nature and good-sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive divine.

Heaven forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on other for assistance call,
Till one man’s weakness grows the strength of all.

Here too all Forms of social Union find,
And hence let Reason, late, instruct mankind:
Here subterranean Works and Cities see,
There Towns aerial on the waving Tree.
Learn each small people’s Genius, Policies;
The Ants Republick, and the Realm of Bees;
How those in common all their stores bestow,
And Anarchy without confusion know.

Index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.
Index-learning is a term used to mock pretenders who acquire superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes.

Isaacus Newtonus:
Quem Immortalem
Testantur Tempus, Natura, Coelum:
Mortalem
Hoc Marmor fatetur.

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in Night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
... Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal Man unfold all Nature's law,
Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And shew'd a NEWTON as we shew an Ape.

Know, Nature’s children all divide her care, The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear.

Know, Nature’s Children all divide her care;
The Furr that warms a Monarch, warm’d a Bear.

Learn Dulness, learn! “The Universal Cause
| “Acts to one End, but acts by various Laws.”

Learn from the Birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the Beasts the physick of the field:
The Arts of building from the Bee receive;
Learn of the Mole to plough, the Worm to weave.

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.

Lo! the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way.

New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise:
So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try,...

Now length of Fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev’n that can boast;
Our sons their fathers’ failing language see.

One Science only will one Genius fit;
So vast is Art, so narrow Human Wit.

Order is Heaven’s first law.

Our plenteous streams a various race supply,
The bright-eye Perch with fins of Tyrian dye,
The silver Eel, in shining volumes roll’d,
The yellow Carp, in scales bedropp’d with gold,
Swift Trouts, diversified with crimson stains,
And Pykes, the Tyrants of the wat’ry plains.

See dying Vegetables Life sustain,
See Life dissolving vegetate again.
All Forms that perish other forms supply,
By turns they catch the vital breath, and die.

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap’d o’er her head!
Philosophy, that lean’d on Heav’n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!

See, plastic Nature working to this End,
The single Atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place,
Form’d, and impell’d, its Neighbour to embrace.

See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being, which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see,
No glass can reach! from Infinite to thee,
From thee to Nothing—On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd:
From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

Sir Isaac Newton, though so deep in algebra and fluxions, could not readily make up a common account: and, when he was Master of the Mint, used to get somebody else to make up his accounts for him.

The nicest constitutions of government are often like the finest pieces of clock-work, which, depending on so many motions, are therefore more subject to be out of order.

The Physician, by the study and inspection of urine and ordure, approves himself in the science; and in like sort should our author accustom and exercise his imagination upon the dregs of nature.

This long disease, my life.

To Observations which ourselves we make,
We grow more partial for th' observer's sake.

To teach vain Wits that Science little known,
T' admire Superior Sense, and doubt their own!

Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide,
First strip off all her equipage of Pride,
Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress,
Or Learning's Luxury or idleness,
Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain
Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.

Who shall decide, when Doctors disagree?

Who, foe to Nature, hears the gen’ral groan,
Murders their species, and betrays his own.

Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.

Pope has elegantly said a perfect woman's but a softer man. And if we take in the consideration, that there can be but one rule of moral excellence for beings made of the same materials, organized after the same manner, and subjected to similar laws of Nature, we must either agree with Mr. Pope, or we must reverse the proposition, and say, that a perfect man is a woman formed after a coarser mold.

It did not last: the Devil howling “Ho, Let Einstein be,” restored the status quo.

[Misattributed] A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.