Joseph Addison

Unbounded courage and compassion join'd, Tempering each other in the victor's mind, Alternately proclaim him good and great, And make the hero and the man complete.

Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.

Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights.

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

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.

It must be so,-Plato, thou reasonest well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'T is the divinity that stirs within us; 'T is Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

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.

The spacious firmament on high,_x000D_ _x000D_ And all the blue ethereal sky,_x000D_ _x000D_ And spangled heavens, a shining frame,_x000D_ _x000D_ Their great Original proclaim.

Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.

When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I'm lost, in wonder, love and praise.

What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind

Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.