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
wine men vanity
Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.
heart sides weakness
Guard thy heart on this weak side, where most our nature fails.
lost variety
Amidst the soft variety I'm lost.
men schemes wander
Instability of temper ought to be checked when it disposes men to wander from one scheme to another: since such a fickleness cannot but be attended with fatal consequences.
music religious wings
Music religious heat inspires, It wakes the soul, and lifts it high, And wings it with sublime desires, And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
opportunity flames trials
God discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will hereafter entitle many to the reward of actions which they had never the opportunity of performing.
science sight perfect
Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses.
numbers giving masters
The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.
ideas sight giving
Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
hope men long
Hope calculates its scenes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; and grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin and dishonor.
philosophy justice sobriety
A state of temperance, sobriety and justice without devotion is a cold, lifeless, insipid condition of virtue, and is rather to be styled philosophy than religion.
laughter men littles
The talent of turning men into ridicule, and exposing to laughter those one converses with, is the qualification of little ungenerous tempers.
design attention may
An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience.
men goddess familiar
When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.