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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.

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
Engaged
Find
Variety
Assemblies
Much
Conversation
Straightened
Never
Subjects
Numerous
Would
Thoughts
Assembly
Think
Instead
Confined
Thinking
Started
Discourse
Company
Larger

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.
Joseph Addison
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Is it not wonderful, that the love of the parent should be so violent while it lasts and that it should last no longer than is necessary for the preservation of the young?
Joseph Addison
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A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.
Joseph Addison
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It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.
Joseph Addison
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Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
Joseph Addison
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Who does not more admire Cicero as an author than as a consul of Rome?
Joseph Addison
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There is a sort of economy in Providence that one shall excel where another is defective, in order to make men more useful to each other, and mix them in society.
Joseph Addison
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A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
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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Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.
Joseph Addison
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Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
Joseph Addison
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Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
Joseph Addison
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Plutarch has written an essay on the benefits which a man may receive from his enemies and among the good fruits of enmity, mentions this in particular, that by the reproaches which it casts upon us, we see the worst side of ourselves.
Joseph Addison
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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.
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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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