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There is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and satires that are written with wit and spirit are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.

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
Nothing
Gossip
Darts
Giving
Wit
Incurable
Make
Base
Betrays
Men
Wounds
Poisoned
Like
Reputation
Inflict
Written
Satire
Satires
Secret
Wound
Ungenerous
Spirit
Betray
Stabs

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There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
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Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
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To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.
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How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?
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If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.
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All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter
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Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.
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Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition.
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There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance
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There is nothing in which men more deceive themselves than in what they call zeal.
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Good Nature, and Evenness of Temper, will give you an easie Companion for Life Vertue and good Sense, an agreeable Friend Love and Constancy, a good Wife or Husband. Where we meet one Person with all these Accomplishments, we find an Hundred without any one of them.
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T is liberty crowns Britannia's Isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.
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It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights.
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The Fear of Death often proves Mortal.
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A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors.
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Heaven is not to be looked upon only as the reward, but the natural effect, of a religious life.
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Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
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Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
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The care of our national commerce redounds more to the riches and prosperity of the public than any other act of government.
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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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