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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.

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
Modesty
Betray
False
Virtue
True
Contemptible
Nothing
Betrays
Guards
Amiable

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Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.
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Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.
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Music religious heat inspires, It wakes the soul, and lifts it high, And wings it with sublime desires, And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
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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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I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.
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There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
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Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
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One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.
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Quick sensitivity is inseperable from a ready understanding.
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The spacious firmament on high, And all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim.
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Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
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What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?
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The Fear of Death often proves Mortal.
Joseph Addison
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It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.
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A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.
Joseph Addison
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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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There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.
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I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
Joseph Addison
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Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
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A jealous man is very quick in his application: he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrick on another.
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