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There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.

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
Anything
Instinct
Reason
Thus
Animals
Short
Animal
Opinion
Infinitely
Fall
Mysterious
Nature
Rise

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Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!
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A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
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Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
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See in what peace a Christian can die.
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Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.
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We have in England a particular bashfulness in every thing that regards religion.
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Quick sensitivity is inseperable from a ready understanding.
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Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.
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There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults. Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.
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We are apt to rely upon future prospects, and become really expensive while we are only rich in possibility. We live up to our expectations, not to our possessions, and make a figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are.
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Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.
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The passion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair sex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who desire to be admired for that which only deserves admiration.
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There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
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It is certain that there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated.
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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.
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But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letter, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind.
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Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.
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Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.
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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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Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind
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