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I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself--as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand.

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
Made
Worse
Suffers
Never
Writers
Critic
Knew
Criminal
Hand
Criminals
Greater
Guilty
Suffering
Generally
Hangman
Business
Faults
Lash
Hands
Critics
Lashes

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart.
Joseph Addison
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Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.
Joseph Addison
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For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.
Joseph Addison
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If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend.
Joseph Addison
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Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.
Joseph Addison
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It is certain that there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated.
Joseph Addison
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T is liberty crowns Britannia's Isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.
Joseph Addison
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Whilst I yet live, let me not live in vain.
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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Though a man cannot abstain from being weak, he may from being vicious.
Joseph Addison
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A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.
Joseph Addison
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There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride.
Joseph Addison
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Let freedom never perish in your hands.
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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Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
Joseph Addison
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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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Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.
Joseph Addison
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The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.
Joseph Addison
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Virtue which shuns, the day.
Joseph Addison
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Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.
Joseph Addison