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For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.

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
Alone
Swarms
Action
Spectators
Spirit
Multitudes
Nature
Spirits
Part
Regions
Believe
Join
Think
Actions
Thinking
Opinion
Swarm

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud Through all her works,) he must delight in virtue.
Joseph Addison
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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.
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In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.
Joseph Addison
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Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.
Joseph Addison
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A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.
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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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Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.
Joseph Addison
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The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader's eye without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt.
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Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
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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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.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
Joseph Addison
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There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
Joseph Addison
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Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
Joseph Addison
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Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart.
Joseph Addison
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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.
Joseph Addison
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Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making.
Joseph Addison
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Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
Joseph Addison
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By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.
Joseph Addison