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We are apt to rely upon future prospects, and become really expensive while we are only rich in possibility. We live up to our expectations, not to our possessions, and make a figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are.

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
Future
Expensive
Become
Possession
May
Expectations
Live
Figure
Really
Figures
Prospects
Make
Possibility
Possessions
Rich
Anticipation
Upon
Rely

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Women were formed to temper Mankind, and sooth them into Tenderness and Compassion not to set an Edge upon their Minds, and blowup in them those Passions which are too apt to rise of their own Accord.
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There are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of Nature, find work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.
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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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There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
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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.
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Every passion gives a particular cast to the countenance, and is apt to discover itself in some feature or other. I have seen an eye curse for half an hour together, and an eyebrow call a man a scoundrel.
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Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
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Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
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Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
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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.
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Men who cherish for women the highest respect are seldom popular with them.
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There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.
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As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
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Talk not of love: thou never knew'st its force.
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A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
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The head has the most beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station, in a human figure.
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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.
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Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
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The greatest parts, without discretion as observed by an elegant writer, may be fatal to their owner as Polyphemus, deprived of his eyes, was only the more exposed on account of his enormous strength and stature.
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There is not a more pleasante exercise of the mind than gratitude.
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