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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
Kind
Obscurity
Roman
Defence
Triumph
Essential
Satires
Defense
Concomitant
Greatness
Censure
Part
Reproach
More quotes by Joseph Addison
The most exquisite words and finest strokes of an author are those which very often appear the most doubtful and exceptionable to a man who wants a relish for polite learning and they are those which a sour undistinguishing critic generally attacks with the greatest violence.
Joseph Addison
Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.
Joseph Addison
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.
Joseph Addison
Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.
Joseph Addison
Health and happiness give rise to each other.
Joseph Addison
The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.
Joseph Addison
How is it possible for those who are men of honor in their persons, thus to become notorious liars in their party
Joseph Addison
With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it.
Joseph Addison
I always rejoice when I see a tribunal filled with a man of an upright and inflexible temper, who in the execution of his country's laws can overcome all private fear, resentment, solicitation, and even pity itself.
Joseph Addison
Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.
Joseph Addison
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
Joseph Addison
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
Joseph Addison
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.
Joseph Addison
A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and should make a due discrimination between those that are and those that are not the proper objects of it.
Joseph Addison
Guard thy heart on this weak side, where most our nature fails.
Joseph Addison
Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.
Joseph Addison
A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts
Joseph Addison
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.
Joseph Addison
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
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
Joseph Addison
