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
trying pieces may
The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.
age looks pieces
Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied; like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.
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.
good greatest heaven mortals
Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have below.
attacking generally good human laugh men ridicule virtue
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
active best itself learning looked man parts qualify virtue
Learning is pedantry, wit, impertinence, virtue itself looked like weakness, and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.