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To this end, nothing is to be more carefully consulted than plainness. In a lady's attire this is the single excellence for to be what some people call fine, is the same vice, in that case, as to be florid is in writing or speaking.

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
Ends
Excellence
Nothing
Vices
Florid
Writing
Speaking
Plainness
People
Case
Consulted
Cases
Attire
Single
Carefully
Fine
Vice
Call
Lady

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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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I should think myself a very bad woman, if I had done what I do for a farthing less.
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Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart.
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What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?
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If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend.
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It is ridiculous for any man to criticize on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances.
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A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.
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Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.
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I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
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There is a great amity between designing and art.
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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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Music religious heat inspires, It wakes the soul, and lifts it high, And wings it with sublime desires, And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
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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.
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There is not a more pleasante exercise of the mind than gratitude.
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Should a writer single out and point his raillery at particular persons, or satirize the miserable, he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man if he could please himself.
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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.
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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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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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Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.
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Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
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