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I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition.

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
Humor
Showy
Within
Smitten
Evil
Befall
Often
Reflected
Light
Evils
Womankind
Everything
Disposition
Unaccountable
Superficial
Numberless
Sex
Fantastical

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Among the English authors, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch the weak, superstitious part of his readers' imagination, and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius.
Joseph Addison
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If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
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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.
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Whilst I yet live, let me not live in vain.
Joseph Addison
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It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.
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Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
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Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
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A good disposition is more valuable than gold, for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.
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One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.
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As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
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Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition.
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Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.
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.
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The moral perfections of the Deity, the more attentively, we consider, the more perfectly still shall we know them.
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 person who has a firm trust in the Supreme Being is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness.
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O ye powers that search The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, If I have done amiss, impute it not! The best may err, but you are good.
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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Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.
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A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.
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