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
running art dark
The ways of heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled in mazes, and perplex'd with errors; Our understanding traces them in vain, Lost and bewilder'd in the fruitless search; Nor sees with how much art the windings run, Nor where the regular confusion ends.
music religious art
Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art.
music religious indulge-in
Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings.
moon periods
Waning moons their settled periods keep, to swell the billows and ferment the deep.
fall soul
A soul exasperated in ills, falls out With everything, its friend, itself.
ignorance yield evil
Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.
dust littles looks
Look what a little vain dust we are!
love passion soul
It is certain that there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated.
soul divinity
T is the Divinity that stirs within us.
may way morality
I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways findtheir Account in the Speculation of the Day.
mind affection virtue
It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.
character men vanity
Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.
truth plato light
There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being,--that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.
wise time passion
The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he does not know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts--or, in other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and the other always enjoying it.