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To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

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
Ground
Morality
Authority
Sanction
Religious
Supplies
Whether
Sanctions
Religion
Secular
Fact
Deny
Facts
Obvious

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An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
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Whilst I yet live, let me not live in vain.
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The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang even at the moment of parting yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half of its bitterness when uttered in accents that breathe love to the last sigh.
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I consider time as an in immense ocean, in which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up.
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Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.
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By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.
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I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition.
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We have in England a particular bashfulness in every thing that regards religion.
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I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
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What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.
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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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Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.
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When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
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The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.
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Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
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Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind
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The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger.
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A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.
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There is no defence against reproach, but obscurity it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.
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Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
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