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

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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.
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I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since they have the same improvable minds as the male part of their species.
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Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.
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Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
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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.
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Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.
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If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud Through all her works,) he must delight in virtue.
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It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.
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Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.
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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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An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.
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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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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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Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries. A marriage of love is pleasant a marriage of interest, easy and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.
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Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.
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If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
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When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? My Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions or rather I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.
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Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
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Love is a second life it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
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A great large book is a great evil.
Joseph Addison