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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.

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
Greatness
Censure
Part
Reproach
Kind
Obscurity
Roman
Defence
Triumph
Essential
Satires
Defense
Concomitant

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A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.
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Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses.
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Women were formed to temper Mankind, and sooth them into Tenderness and Compassion not to set an Edge upon their Minds, and blowup in them those Passions which are too apt to rise of their own Accord.
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I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself--as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand.
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Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
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When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.
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Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it courage which arises from a sense of duty acts in a uniform manner.
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Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making.
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Among the English authors, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch the weak, superstitious part of his readers' imagination, and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius.
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True fortitude is seen in great exploits That justice warrants, and that wisdom guides And all else is tow'ring phrenzy and distraction.
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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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It is ridiculous for any man to criticize on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances.
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Virtue which shuns, the day.
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Hunting is not a proper employment for a thinking man.
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Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.
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Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.
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One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.
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We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.
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For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.
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Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
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