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
confidence awkward merit
Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
success merit command
This not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.
years age merit
Must one rash word, the infirmity of age, throw down the merit of my better years?
honor ancestry merit
In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.
acceptance awkward merit
Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward; and merit without modesty, insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, and generally meets with as many patrons as beholders.
inspiring perfect excellence
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.
heart men care
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
block education english-writer human sculpture
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.
block education human sculpture
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
admission love spite virtue woman
When love once pleads admission to our hearts, / In spite of all the virtue we can boast,/ The woman that deliberates is lost.
business requisite
There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch.
mankind rather species spectator
I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species
air both judgement man might roger sir
Sir Roger told them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgement rashly, that much might be said on both sides.
english-writer good greatest heaven mortals
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have here below.