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
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.
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.
above knowledge next raises truly virtue
Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.
beautiful death virtue
How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
modesty virtue betray
Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.
affliction prosperity virtue
Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
men enemy virtue
A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.
modesty virtue
Virtue which shuns, the day.
mind affection virtue
It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.
justice virtue godlike
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
world friendship-love virtue
Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
creatures perverse
These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.
consider figure man pray republic
Pray consider what a figure a man would make in the republic of letters.