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
dividing doubling friendship friends-or-friendship improves
Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
block education english-writer human sculpture
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.
block education human sculpture
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
admission love spite virtue woman
When love once pleads admission to our hearts, / In spite of all the virtue we can boast,/ The woman that deliberates is lost.
inspiring perfect excellence
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.
heart men care
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
attacking generally good human laugh men ridicule virtue
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
active best itself learning looked man parts qualify virtue
Learning is pedantry, wit, impertinence, virtue itself looked like weakness, and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.
english-writer good greatest heaven mortals
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have here below.
creatures perverse
These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.
blue firmament great original shining
The spacious firmament on high, / And all the blue ethereal sky, / And spangled heavens, a shining frame, / Their great Original proclaim.
consider figure man pray republic
Pray consider what a figure a man would make in the republic of letters.
becomes extricate mind till unable water
Our disputants put me in mind of the scuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible.
consider man might unhappy
A man should always consider how much more unhappy he might be than he is