Quote

That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out.

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
Eye
Affection
Affections
House
Pass
Introduce
Part
Fine
Outward
Seems
Least
Introducing
Much
Passion
Seat
Mind
Within
Construction
Common
Passions
Receptacle
Rather
Seats
Portal

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Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.
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A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.
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Knavery is ever suspicious of knavery.
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Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.
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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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Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
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That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
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Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
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The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.
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Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
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When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.
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The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy hereafter.
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There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
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There is no passion that is not finely expressed in those parts of the inspired writings which are proper for divine songs and anthems.
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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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Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.
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Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.
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Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
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To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.
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Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.
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