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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.

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
Life
Wants
Discretion
World
Share
Station
Though
Stations
Common
Consequence
Others
Perfection
May
Please
Great
Talent
Perfections
Men
Single
Pleases

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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Blesses his stars and thinks it luxury.
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Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture.
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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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The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger.
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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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The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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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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In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
Joseph Addison
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Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
Joseph Addison
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The greatest parts, without discretion as observed by an elegant writer, may be fatal to their owner as Polyphemus, deprived of his eyes, was only the more exposed on account of his enormous strength and stature.
Joseph Addison
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That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out.
Joseph Addison
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A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.
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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Must one rash word, the infirmity of age, throw down the merit of my better years?
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love, With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art.
Joseph Addison
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Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.
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Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.
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A great large book is a great evil.
Joseph Addison