Quote

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.

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
Parts
Observed
Strength
Deprived
Writer
Elegant
Greatest
Owners
Polyphemus
Eyes
Exposed
Stature
Eye
Account
Discretion
May
Accounts
Owner
Without
Enormous
Fatal

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Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire for them.
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Life is not long enough for a coquette to play all her tricks in.
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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.
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A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.
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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.
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There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.
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In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
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Government mitigates the inequality of power, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow-subjects.
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Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
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Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
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There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.
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A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections
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The Gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength, and throw our into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.
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But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letter, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind.
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Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
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Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
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Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
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Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
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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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Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.
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