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Other authors named Joseph:
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Author's popularity: 1
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Popularity: 12
Vote: | A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes. |
Popularity: -4
Vote: | A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | 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. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts ;in a uniform manner. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | 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.'' |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | 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! |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Jesters do often prove prophets. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | 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. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below. |
Popularity: 8
Vote: | Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature. |
Popularity: 10
Vote: | No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. |
Popularity: -1
Vote: | See in what peace a Christian can die. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel? |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | The beloved of the Almighty are: the rich who have the humility of the poor, and the poor who have the magnamity of the rich. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover. |
Popularity: 5
Vote: | The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The post of honour is a private station. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | The unassuming youth seeking instruction with humility gains good fortune. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life... Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight. |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing. |
Popularity: -2
Vote: | Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch. |
Popularity: 7
Vote: | There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | 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. |
Popularity: 0
Vote: | 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. |
Popularity: 6
Vote: | True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | ''We are always doing,'' says he, ''something for posterity, but I would see posterity do something for us.'' |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country. |
Popularity: 9
Vote: | What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul. |
Popularity: -3
Vote: | What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable. |
Popularity: 1
Vote: | When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations. |
Popularity: 3
Vote: | When somebody gives you a sexy look, you know they're trying. It's terrible! But when you smile, it's so much sexier! |
Popularity: 4
Vote: | With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both. |
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Biography
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Joseph Addison (May 1, 1672 – June 17, 1719) was an English politician and writer. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend, Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine.
Addison was born in Milston, Wiltshire, his father Lancelot Addison being dean of the cathedral city of Lichfield. He was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Steele, and at Queen's College, Oxford. He excelled in classics, being specially noted for his Latin verse, and became a Fellow of Magdalen. In 1693, he addressed a poem to John Dryden, the former Poet Laureate, and his first major work, a book about the lives of English poets, was published in 1694, and his translation of Vergil's Georgics in the same year.
Such first attempts in English verse were so successful as to obtain for him the friendship and interest of Dryden, and of Lord Somers, by whose means he received, in 1699, a pension of £300 to enable him to travel widely in Europe the continent with a view to diplomatic employment, all the time writing and studying politics. Hearing of the death of William III., an event which lost him his pension, he returned to England in the end of 1703. For a short time his circumstances were somewhat straitened, but the battle of Blenheim in 1704 gave him a fresh opportunity of distinguishing himself. The government wished the event commemorated by a poem; Addison was commissioned to write this, and produced The Campaign, which gave such satisfaction that he was forthwith appointed a Commissioner of Appeals in the government of Halifax. His next literary venture was an account of his travels in Italy, which was followed by the opera of Rosamund. In 1705, the Whigs having obtained the ascendency, Addison was made Under-Secretary of State and accompanied Halifax on a mission to Hanover. In 1708 he became MP for Malmesbury in his home county of Wiltshire, and was shortly afterwards appointed as Chief Secretary for Ireland and Keeper of the Records of that country. He encountered Jonathan Swift in Ireland, and remained there for a year. Subsequently, he helped found the Kitcat Club, and renewed his association with Steele. In 1709 Steele began to bring out the Tatler, to which Addison became almost immediately a contributor: thereafter he (with Steele) started The Spectator, the first number of which appeared on March 1, 1711. This paper, which at first appeared daily, was kept up (with a break of about a year and a half when the Guardian took its place) until December 20, 1714. In 1713 the drama of Cato appeared, and was received with acclamation by both Whigs and Tories, and was followed by the comedy of the Drummer. His last undertaking was The Freeholder, a party paper (1715-16).
The later events in the life of Addison did not contribute to his happiness. In 1716, he married the Dowager Countess of Warwick to whose son he had been tutor, and his political career continued to flourish, as he served Secretary of State for the Southern Department from 1717 to 1718. However, his political newspaper, The Freeholder, was much criticised, and Alexander Pope was among those who made him an object of derision, christening him "Atticus". His wife appears to have been arrogant and imperious; his step-son the Earl was a rake and unfriendly to him; while in his public capacity his invincible shyness made him of little use in Parliament. He eventually fell out with Steele over the Peerage Bill of 1719. In 1718, Addison was forced to resign as secretary of state because of his poor health, but remained an MP until his death at Holland House, June 17, 1719, in his 48th year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Besides the works above mentioned, he wrote a Dialogue on Medals, and left unfinished a work on the Evidences of Christianity. The character of Addison, if somewhat cool and unimpassioned, was pure, magnanimous, and kind. The charm of his manners and conversation made him one of the most popular and admired men of his day; and while he laid his friends under obligations for substantial favours, he showed the greatest forbearance towards his few enemies. His style in his essays is remarkable for its ease, clearness, and grace, and for an inimitable and sunny humour which never soils and never hurts. The motive power of these writings has been called "an enthusiasm for conduct." Their effect was to raise the whole standard of manners and expression both in life and in literature. The only flaw in his character was a tendency to convivial excess, which must be judged in view of the laxer manners of his time. When allowance has been made for this, he remains one of the most admirable characters and writers in English literature.
Summary
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Joseph Addison".
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