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I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.

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
Upon
Improvement
Diversions
Easy
Useful
Improvements
Young
Fortune
Diversion
May
Concerned
Gentlemen
Much
Wisdom
Wholly
Make
Quality
Pleasures
World
Pleasure
Neglect
Knowledge
Gentleman

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Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.
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A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.
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Good Nature, and Evenness of Temper, will give you an easie Companion for Life Vertue and good Sense, an agreeable Friend Love and Constancy, a good Wife or Husband. Where we meet one Person with all these Accomplishments, we find an Hundred without any one of them.
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I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: 'What I spent I lost what I possessed is left to others what I gave away remains with me.'
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Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.
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A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
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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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Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
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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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T is liberty crowns Britannia's Isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.
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The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented.
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Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.
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A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.
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A good disposition is more valuable than gold, for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.
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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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It is impossible for authors to discover beauties in one another's works they have eyes only for spots and blemishes.
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It happened very providentially, to the honor of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height.
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If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.
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It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.
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What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.
Joseph Addison