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The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.

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
Clouds
Brings
Fate
Overcast
Morning
Cato
Bigs
Lowers
Important
Heavily
Great
Rome
Dawn

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There is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and satires that are written with wit and spirit are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.
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Instability of temper ought to be checked when it disposes men to wander from one scheme to another: since such a fickleness cannot but be attended with fatal consequences.
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There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.
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One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.
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Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.
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Marriage enlarges the Scene of our Happiness and Miseries.
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That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out.
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In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.
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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.
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It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights.
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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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The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy hereafter.
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Talk not of love: thou never knew'st its force.
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There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.
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The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.
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A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.
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I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.
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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.
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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
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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