“Errare humanum est”

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verse, as well as for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare.

The phrase “To err is human” is often used as a part of a longer phrase in English, “to err is human; to forgive, divine” and comes from one of the first major poems written by Pope, An Essay on Criticism (line 325). The poem first appeared in 1711. It was written in 1709, and it is clear from Pope’s correspondence that many of the poem’s ideas had existed in prose form since at least 1706. It is a verse essay written in the Horatian mode and is primarily concerned with how writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of Pope’s contemporary age. The poem covers a range of good criticism and advice, and represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope’s age.

The verse was probably inspired by the phrase: “Errare humanum est, sed in errare perseverare diabolicum”, attributed to Seneca the Younger, which translates to: “To err is human, but to persist in error is diabolical”. The phrase however gained currency in English language after Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism”.