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
art eye hair
Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she has touched it with vermilion, planted in it a double row of ivory, made it the seat of smiles and blushes, lighted it up and enlivened it with the brightness of the eyes, hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light.
real grief loss
In the loss of an object we do not proportion our grief to the real value it bears, but to the value our fancies set upon it.
fear men evil
Were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him than from those evils which had really befallen him.
eye drawing forever
It must be a prospect pleasing to God Himself to see His creation forever beautifying in His eyes, and drawing nearer Him by greater degrees of resemblance.
beautiful appearance figures
The head has the most beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station, in a human figure.
hate men enemy
Plutarch says very finely that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies.
hair glory
The ungrown glories of his beamy hair.
fall grief tears
In rising sighs and falling tears.
men good-nature good-humor
Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.
men world may
One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.
writing lapses genius
The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing.
passing-away together dozen
It is wonderful to see persons of sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards.
dream future men
Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news. If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.
eye mirth innocence
There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.