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
humble humility literature
The unassuming youth seeking instruction with humility gains good fortune.
lying mind culture
The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.
death people dying
The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.
christian men mind
Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.
music nonsense wells
Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
confidence awkward merit
Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
life dream hope
If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.
men giving 50th-birthday
Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.
idols unhappy literature
There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.
funny humor criticism
Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
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.
beauty beautiful eye
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
fall winter roger
I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter.
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.