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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.

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
Greater
Artifice
Making
Reduced
Use
Necessity
Wicked
Sign
Cause
Artifices
Causes
Patrons
Support
Patron

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Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.
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There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
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A thousand glorious actions that might claim Triumphant laurels, and immortal fame, Confus'd in crowds of glorious actions lie, And troops of heroes undistinguished die.
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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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The Fashionable World is grown free and easie our Manners sit more loose upon us: Nothing is so modish as an agreeable Negligence. In a word, Good Breeding shows it self most, where to an ordinary Eye it appears the least.
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The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.
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Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.
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Oh, Liberty! thou goddess heavenly bright! Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight! Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train.
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Should a writer single out and point his raillery at particular persons, or satirize the miserable, he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man if he could please himself.
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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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Jesters do often prove prophets.
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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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There is noting truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure.
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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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There is sometimes a greater judgement shewn in deviating from the rules of art, than in adhering to them and?there ismore beauty inthe works of a great genius who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them.
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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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But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letter, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind.
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How is it possible for those who are men of honor in their persons, thus to become notorious liars in their party
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He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.
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A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts
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