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When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition.

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
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Author
Means
Immediately
Mean
Discover
Likes
Criticism
Rules
Works
Inquire
Written
Composition

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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Love is a second life it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves.
Joseph Addison
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Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.
Joseph Addison
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What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.
Joseph Addison
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Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses.
Joseph Addison
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Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
Joseph Addison
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The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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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!
Joseph Addison
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The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader's eye without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belongto his Neighbour.
Joseph Addison
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It was a saying of an ancient philosopher, which I find some of our writers have ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, who perhaps might have taken occasion to repeat it, that a good face is a letter of recommendation.
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.
Joseph Addison
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Let echo, too, perform her part, Prolonging every note with art And in a low expiring strain, Play all the comfort o'er again.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
Joseph Addison