Joseph Addison Quotes
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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.
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What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.
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A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.
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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.
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When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.
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Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
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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.
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I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
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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.
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If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
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If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.
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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.'
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Jesters do often prove prophets.
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The post of honour is a private station.
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What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.
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We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.
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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.
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Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.
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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.
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The unassuming youth seeking instruction with humility gains good fortune.
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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.
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The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.
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Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.
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Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.