Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addisonwas an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend, Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 May 1672
soul desire fruition
Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it; an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition.
moon periods
Waning moons their settled periods keep, to swell the billows and ferment the deep.
sky blue heaven
The spacious firmament on high, And all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim.
editors storm whirlwind
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
success merit command
This not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.
water mind invisible
Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible.
thyself
Content thyself to be obscurely good.
jealous men envy
A jealous man is very quick in his application: he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrick on another.
nature fall animal
There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.
beauty beautiful eye
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
kindness lying men
Half the misery of human life might be extinguished if men would alleviate the general curse they lie under by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence, and humanity.
affliction prosperity virtue
Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
thank-you gratitude exercise
There is not a more pleasante exercise of the mind than gratitude.
graduation depressing home
Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.