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A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.

Joseph Addison

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Joseph Addison
Age: 47 †
Born: 1672
Born: May 1
Died: 1719
Died: June 17
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Milston
Wiltshire
Joseph Addisson
Right Hon. Joseph Addison
Men
Sets
Reasonable
Humility
Pride
Talent
Recommend
Doe
Eloquence
Great
Modesty
Every
Possessed

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If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
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A brother's sufferings claim a brother's pity.
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A great large book is a great evil.
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We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.
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To this end, nothing is to be more carefully consulted than plainness. In a lady's attire this is the single excellence for to be what some people call fine, is the same vice, in that case, as to be florid is in writing or speaking.
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Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.
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Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
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Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.
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The world is so full of ill-nature that I have lampoons sent me by people who cannot spell, and satires composed by those who scarce know how to write.
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There are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of Nature, find work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.
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Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
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Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.
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There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.
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Whether zeal or moderation be the point we aim at, let us keep fire out of the one, and frost out of the other.
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Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
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The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
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There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.
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It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.
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A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
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Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.
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