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

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A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and should make a due discrimination between those that are and those that are not the proper objects of it.
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I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since they have the same improvable minds as the male part of their species.
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A brother's sufferings claim a brother's pity.
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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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To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.
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Blesses his stars and thinks it luxury.
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Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.
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Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.
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We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.
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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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Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.
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It was a saying of an ancient philosopher, which I find some of our writers have ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, who perhaps might have taken occasion to repeat it, that a good face is a letter of recommendation.
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There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
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The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.
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Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.
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Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
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The passion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair sex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who desire to be admired for that which only deserves admiration.
Joseph Addison
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There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.
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Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.
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Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture.
Joseph Addison