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
christian art dark
It happened very providentially, to the honor of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height.
holiday men firsts
Every man in the time of courtship and in the first entrance of marriage, puts on a behavior like my correspondent's holiday suit.
plato sacrifice men
Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned.
eye ordinary breeding
Good-breeding shows itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.
mean soldier world
Thus I live in the world rather as a Spectator of mankind, than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part of life.
money people primitive
They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.
music mind praise
Music raises in the mind of the hearer great conceptions: it strengthens and advances praise into rapture.
love soul veins
Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
voice reason force
The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.
4th-of-july hands happy-independence-day
Let freedom never perish in your hands.
beauty absence nature-beauty
Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
inspirational exercise soul
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
laughter men mirth
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
book generations genius
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.