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
philosophy light guilt
Thy steady temper, Portius, Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud, and Cæsar, In the calm lights of mild philosophy.
people months england
The gloomy months of November, when the people of England hang and drown themselves.
beautiful imagination beautiful-women
There is nothing touches our imagination so much as a beautiful woman in a plain dress.
cheerful innocence attractive
A cheerful temper, joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.
book legacy genius
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind
this-life ends provision
We make provisions for this life as if it were never to have an end, and for the other life as though it were never to have a beginning.
gratitude fall thinking
It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to them by such a division. [as they realise their problems could be worse!]
courage hero men
Unbounded courage and compassion join'd, Tempering each other in the victor's mind, Alternately proclaim him good and great, And make the hero and the man complete.
money philosophy men
A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.
thank-you gratitude grateful
If gratitude, when exerted towards another, naturally produces a very pleasing sensation in the mind of a grateful man, it exalts the soul into rapture when it is employed on this great object of gratitude to the beneficent Being who has given us everything we already possess, and from whom we expect everything we yet hope for.
losing lost
The woman that deliberates is lost.
soul lost-friendship demand
Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn.
distance circles sound
A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.
discrimination satire should
A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and should make a due discrimination between those that are and those that are not the proper objects of it.