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The first race of mankind used to dispute, as our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of wild logic, uncultivated by rule of art.

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
Art
Wild
Used
Logic
Firsts
Argument
First
Rule
Kind
Ordinary
People
Mankind
Uncultivated
Days
Dispute
Race
Disputes

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Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
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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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'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, and makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile... 'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate, and hold in balance each contending state, To threaten bold presumptuous kings with war, and answer her afflicted neighbours' prayer... Soon as her fleets appear their terrors cease.
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There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
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Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
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A virtuous mind in a fair body is indeed a fine picture in a good light, and therefore it is no wonder that it makes the beautiful sex all over charms.
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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.
Joseph Addison
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Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.
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Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.
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Those who were skillful in Anatomy among the Ancients, concluded from the outward and inward Make of an Human Body, that it was the Work of a Being transcendently Wise and Powerful. As the World grew more enlightened in this Art, their Discoveries gave them fresh Opportunities of admiring the Conduct of Providence in the Formation of an Human Body.
Joseph Addison
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My death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me.
Joseph Addison
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A brother's sufferings claim a brother's pity.
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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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Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
Joseph Addison
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Instability of temper ought to be checked when it disposes men to wander from one scheme to another: since such a fickleness cannot but be attended with fatal consequences.
Joseph Addison
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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.
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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Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.
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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.
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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.
Joseph Addison