dots-menu
×

Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  3585 Alexander Pope 1688-1744 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

3585 Alexander Pope 1688-1744 John Bartlett

 
NUMBER:3585
AUTHOR:Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
QUOTATION:A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits. 1
ATTRIBUTION:The Dunciad. Book iv. Line 90.
 
Note 1.
See Shakespeare, King Henry V, Quotation 31.

This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among lords.—Samuel Johnson (Boswell’s Life): vol. ii. ch. i.

A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.—William Cowper: Conversation, line 298.

Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers.—Sir Walter Scott: Life of Napoleon.

He [Steele] was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.—Thomas B. Macaulay: Review of Aikin’s Life of Addison.

Temple was a man of the world among men of letters, a man of letters among men of the world.—Thomas B. Macaulay: Review of Life and Writings of Sir William Temple.

Greswell in his “Memoirs of Politian” says that Sannazarius himself, inscribing to this lady [Cassandra Marchesia] an edition of his Italian Poems, terms her “delle belle eruditissima, delle erudite bellissima” (most learned of the fair; fairest of the learned).

Qui stultis videri eruditi volunt stulti eruditis videntur (Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish).—Quintilian, x. 7. 22. [back]