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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.

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
Art
Letter
Government
Governments
May
Arts
Letters
Mankind
Degeneracy
Particular
Despotic
Though
Favour
Natural
Prince

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An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
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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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A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.
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There is nobody so weak of invention that cannot make some little stories to villify his enemy.
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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.
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Marriage enlarges the Scene of our Happiness and Miseries.
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A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.
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As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
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The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
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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.
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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.
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The ways of heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled in mazes, and perplex'd with errors Our understanding traces them in vain, Lost and bewilder'd in the fruitless search Nor sees with how much art the windings run, Nor where the regular confusion ends.
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I should think myself a very bad woman, if I had done what I do for a farthing less.
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Government mitigates the inequality of power, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow-subjects.
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To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.
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Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.
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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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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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Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.
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My death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me.
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