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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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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
Time
Degree
Degrees
Short
Within
Decease
Lives
Exactness
Cannot
Writ
Great
Tolerable
Men
Elegance

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making.
Joseph Addison
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What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.
Joseph Addison
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I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.
Joseph Addison
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To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge,--carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man.
Joseph Addison
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Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.
Joseph Addison
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Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.
Joseph Addison
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To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.
Joseph Addison
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If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud Through all her works,) he must delight in virtue.
Joseph Addison
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Government mitigates the inequality of power, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow-subjects.
Joseph Addison
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Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.
Joseph Addison
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Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!
Joseph Addison
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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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A jealous man is very quick in his application: he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrick on another.
Joseph Addison
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If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend.
Joseph Addison
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My voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?
Joseph Addison
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Nature is full of wonders every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite.
Joseph Addison
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Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
Joseph Addison
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There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults. Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.
Joseph Addison