Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719)
English politician and writer.
O ye powers that search
The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts,
If I have done amiss, impute it not!
The best may err, but you are good.
Why wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer
Imaginary ills, and fancy'd tortures?
Oh! think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods,
Oh! 'tis a dreadful interval of time,
Filled up with horror all, and big with death!
What though no real voice nor sound
Amid their radiant orbs be found ;
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
"The Hand that made us divine."
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
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.
These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.
There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence ; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.
Is there not some chosen curse,
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man
Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin?
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
Better to die ten thousand deaths,
Than wound my honour.
Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow,
And Scipio's ghost walks unavenged amongst us!
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
We are growing serious, and,
Let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull.
Curse on his virtues! they've undone his country.
'Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we'll do more, Sempronius; we'll deserve it.
In our way to the Club to-night, when I regretted that Goldsmith would, upon every occasion, endeavour to shine, by which he often exposed himself; Mr. Langton observed, that he was not like Addison, who was content with the fame of his writings, and did not aim also at excellency in conversation, for which he found himself unfit; and that he said to a lady, who complained of his having talked little in company, "Madam, I have but nine-pence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds".
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.