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By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.

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
Stars
Parts
Heaven
Eternity
Wandering
Happiness
Sun
Heavens
Enjoy
Sight
Retired
Earth
Forward
Anticipation
Lose
Sugar
Loses
Wander
Shall
Misery

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Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.
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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.
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Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
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Though a man cannot abstain from being weak, he may from being vicious.
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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.
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Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.
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My voice is still for war.
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In my Lucia's absence Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear, And grief, and rage and love rise up at once, And with variety of pain distract me.
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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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Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
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There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
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Whether zeal or moderation be the point we aim at, let us keep fire out of the one, and frost out of the other.
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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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I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.
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Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.
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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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Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
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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.
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A fine coat is but a livery when the person who wears it discovers no higher sense than that of a footman.
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When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
Joseph Addison