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It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.

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
World
Takes
Wit
Dispositions
Either
Secrets
Esteemed
Secret
Ill
Converse
Desire
Vanity
Gratifying
Thought
Generally
Converses
Persons
Rise
Scandal
Mind
Private
Inclination
Make
Mankind
Disposition
Ostentation

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When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition.
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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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I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: 'What I spent I lost what I possessed is left to others what I gave away remains with me.'
Joseph Addison
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Heaven is not to be looked upon only as the reward, but the natural effect, of a religious life.
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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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Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
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A good disposition is more valuable than gold, for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.
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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.
Joseph Addison
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Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always, therefore, represented as blind.
Joseph Addison
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I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.
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Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.
Joseph Addison
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A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.
Joseph Addison
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Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
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It is odd to consider the connection between despotism and barbarity, and how the making one person more than man makes the rest less.
Joseph Addison
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A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.
Joseph Addison
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Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind
Joseph Addison
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It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.
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Those Marriages generally abound most with Love and Constancy, that are preceded by a long Courtship.
Joseph Addison
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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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Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.
Joseph Addison