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
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.
running ambition mean
Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.
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.
men suffering earth
There is not in earth a spectacle more worthy than a great man superior to his sufferings.
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.
men goddess familiar
When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.
thinking filled-up lasts
Oh! think what anxious moments pass between The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods, Oh! 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Filled up with horror all, and big with death!
knavery suspicious
Knavery is ever suspicious of knavery.
pain hypocrite mean
Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.
honor mind example
The sense of honour is of so fine and delicate a nature, that it is only to be met with in minds which are naturally noble, or in such as have been cultivated by good examples, or a refined education.
men idols may
An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman.