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Who really said it

To err is human, to forgive, divine

Written by Alexander Pope 1688–1744 · English poet, satirist and translator
Verified Free to reuse

The couplet closes an argument about critics near the end of Part II of Pope’s An Essay on Criticism, first published in London in May 1711 — and it is legible in the first-edition facsimile. One caveat on wording: Pope’s printer set it as “To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine,” because “humane” was then the ordinary spelling of “human.”

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“To err is human, to forgive, divine” Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism" (London, 1711), Part II, line 525. First edition: "To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine." — "humane" was the standard 18th-century spelling of "human." Verified via Quotle.info

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Provenance

The source

Work
An Essay on Criticism
First published
London, 15 May 1711
Location
Part II, line 525
As first printed
“To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine.”

To what base Ends, and by what abject Ways,
Are Mortals urg’d by Sacred Lust of Praise?
Ah ne’er so dire a Thirst of Glory boast,
Nor in the Critick let the Man be lost!
Good-Nature and Good-Sense must ever join;
To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine. Part II, near the close

Transcribed from page 38 of the 1711 first-edition facsimile on Wikisource, italics and capitals as printed. Line numbering varies slightly between printings: Wikipedia places the couplet at line 525, while the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive’s text of the 1713 second edition numbers it 526.

First-edition facsimile, 1711
See the couplet on the page of Pope’s first edition
Read the line-numbered text at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive

How the line reached us

Public domain

An Essay on Criticism was first published in London in 1711, so both the poem and its early printings are in the public domain in the United States. Wikimedia Commons carries the first-edition scan under an explicit public-domain mark, noting that it was published before 1 January 1931 ↗. No translation is involved — Pope wrote in English.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people still get wrong

Pope really did write it — this one survives the check. But two things about the line as it is quoted today are not his, and a third home it often gets given is simply wrong.

Not coined by Pope — an older proverb predates 1711

“To err is human” was already a commonplace. Idiom Origins notes ↗ that Pope did not coin those words, and that the Latin errare humanum est had been current for centuries, often attributed to Plutarch. The closest classical wording with a real citation behind it is Cicero’s, in Philippica XII, 5 ↗: “Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.” What Pope added — and what made it immortal — is the second half.

The Bible not scripture

The couplet sounds like scripture and gets quoted as if it were, but it is not in the Bible. Idiom Origins states plainly ↗ that the saying did not originate in the New Testament, despite its Christian sentiment.

“human” is a modernisation spelling

Every modern quotation silently updates Pope. The 1711 first edition ↗ reads “To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine” — which, as Phrases.org.uk explains ↗, was not an error but the accepted spelling of the day.

The couplet is genuinely Pope’s, published in An Essay on Criticism in London in May 1711 ↗ — you can read it on the page of the first edition ↗.

Context

It was advice to reviewers, not a sermon

Pope aimed An Essay on Criticism at critics, and the famous couplet is the punchline of a complaint about reviewers who make their names by savaging other writers. The lines just before it read “Ah ne’er so dire a Thirst of Glory boast, / Nor in the Critick let the Man be lost!” — so the forgiveness Pope calls divine is, in context, the standard he is setting for somebody holding a pen, as Interesting Literature reads it ↗.

The poem is didactic verse in heroic couplets — rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter — which is why a line meant as a rule for book reviewers detaches so cleanly and travels so far. Pope was a poet in his early twenties when it appeared in London in May 1711, and the couplet has been quoted loose from its argument ever since.

Nor in the Critick let the Man be lost!

Why the first edition reads “Humane”

The 1711 sheets set the line as “To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine.” That is not a typo and not a different word: Phrases.org.uk explains ↗ that “humane” was simply the accepted spelling of “human” in the early eighteenth century.

Pope’s own collected Works of 1717 already prints it in the softer form “To err is humane, to forgive, divine,” with a comma where the first edition had a semicolon — so the drift toward the modern reading began in the poet’s own lifetime, in a volume he supervised.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Kindness Failure Humility

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The line in Pope's 1711 first editionen.wikisource.org

Wikisource's transcription of page 38 of the first-edition facsimile, where the couplet appears as "To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine."
The Works of Alexander Pope (1717)en.wikisource.org

Pope's own collected edition, printing the line as "To err is humane, to forgive, divine."
An Essay on Criticism — full textwww.gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg's free modernised text of the whole poem, containing the couplet and its surrounding lines.
Line-numbered scholarly textwww.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org

The Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive's edition from the 1713 second printing, which numbers the line 526.
Alexander Pope on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotation list crediting the line to An Essay on Criticism (1711); nothing about it in the disputed or misattributed sections.
Meaning and origin of the phrasewww.phrases.org.uk

Reproduces the original quatrain and explains that "humane" was the accepted early-18th-century spelling of "human."
Cicero, Philippic XIIen.wikiquote.org

The nearest documented classical parallel to the first half: "Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare."

The author

About Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

1688–1744 · English poet, satirist and translator

Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 and died at Twickenham on 30 May 1744, aged 56. As a Catholic under the Test Acts he was barred from university, from voting and from public office, and from the age of twelve Pott disease — tuberculosis of the spine — deformed his back and stopped his growth at four feet six inches; he made a living instead as the first English poet to get rich on subscription, largely through his verse translations of the Iliad and Odyssey. Wikipedia notes that he is often quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, with verses such as “damning with faint praise” and “to err is human; to forgive, divine” having entered common parlance.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (London, 1711), Part II, line 525: “To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine.” First-edition facsimile, p. 38, via Wikisource.

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