Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.
Joseph Addison
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Action
Grain
Character
Ridiculous
Best
Actions
Discredits
Without
Personality
Discredit
Many
Circumstances
Serpent
Made
Becomes
Dove
Men
Least
Wholly
Life
Often
Composition
More quotes by Joseph Addison
Oh, Liberty! thou goddess heavenly bright! Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight! Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train.
Joseph Addison
Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.
Joseph Addison
Our friends don't see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them.
Joseph Addison
There is nobody so weak of invention that cannot make some little stories to villify his enemy.
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
The head has the most beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station, in a human figure.
Joseph Addison
Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.
Joseph Addison
To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge,--carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man.
Joseph Addison
That courage which arises from the sense of our duty, and from the fear of offending Him that made us, acts always in a uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right reason.
Joseph Addison
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.
Joseph Addison
O ye powers that search The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, If I have done amiss, impute it not! The best may err, but you are good.
Joseph Addison
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.
Joseph Addison
Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart.
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
Guard thy heart on this weak side, where most our nature fails.
Joseph Addison
Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
Joseph Addison
The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo.
Joseph Addison
The first race of mankind used to dispute, as our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of wild logic, uncultivated by rule of art.
Joseph Addison
There is a sort of economy in Providence that one shall excel where another is defective, in order to make men more useful to each other, and mix them in society.
Joseph Addison
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.
Joseph Addison
