#josephaddison — Public Fediverse posts

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

~ Joseph Addison, born today, 1672.

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

When Men are easy in their Circumstances, they are naturally Enemies to Innovations.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1716-05-16), The Freeholder, No. 42

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another. It finishes one half of the human Soul. It makes Being pleasant to us, fills the mind with entertaining views and administers to it a perpetual series of gratifications. It gives ease to fortitude, and gracefulness to retirement. It fills a publick station with suitable abilities, and adds a lustre to those who are in the possession of them.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-07-18), The Guardian, No. 111

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another. It finishes one half of the human Soul. It makes Being pleasant to us, fills the mind with entertaining views and administers to it a perpetual series of gratifications. It gives ease to fortitude, and gracefulness to retirement. It fills a publick station with suitable abilities, and adds a lustre to those who are in the possession of them.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-07-18), The Guardian, No. 111

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind, that we may suppose her thoughts are wholly intent on the equity of a cause, without being diverted or prejudiced by objects foreign to it.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-07-04), The Guardian, No. 99

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A quotation from Addison

When a nation once loses its regard to justice; when they do not look up it as something venerable, holy and inviolable; when any of them dare presume to lessen, affront or terrify those who have the distribution of it in their hands; when a judge is capable of being influenced by any thing that is foreign to its own merits, we may venture to pronounce that such a nation is hastening to its ruin.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-07-04), The Guardian, No. 99

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A quotation from Addison

When a nation once loses its regard to justice; when they do not look up it as something venerable, holy and inviolable; when any of them dare presume to lessen, affront or terrify those who have the distribution of it in their hands; when a judge is capable of being influenced by any thing that is foreign to its own merits, we may venture to pronounce that such a nation is hastening to its ruin.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-07-04), The Guardian, No. 99

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

LUCIUS: From hence, let fierce contending nations know,
   What dire effects from civil discord flow.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 5, sc. 4, l. 106ff (1713)

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

CATO: Forbear, Sempronius! — see they suffer death,
   But in their deaths remember they are men.
   Strain not the laws to make their tortures grievous.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 3, sc. 5, l. 60ff (1713)

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

MARCUS: Oh Portius, is there not some chosen curse,
   Some hidden thunder in the stores of heav’n
   Red with uncommon wrath to blast the man,
   Who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin?

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 1, sc. 1, l. 20ff (1713)

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

MARCUS: Oh Portius, is there not some chosen curse,
   Some hidden thunder in the stores of heav’n
   Red with uncommon wrath to blast the man,
   Who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin?

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 1, sc. 1, l. 20ff (1713)

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Musick, the greatest Good that Mortals know,
And all of Heav’n we have below.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Poem (1694), “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, at Oxford,” st. 3

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

As exercise becomes tedious and painful when we make use of it only as the means of health, so reading is apt to grow uneasy and burdensome, when we apply ourselves to it only for our improvement in virtue. For this reason, the virtue which we gather from a fable, or an allegory, is like the health we get by hunting; as we are engaged in an agreeable pursuit that draws us on with pleasure, and makes us insensible of the fatigues that accompany it.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1709-03-18), The Tatler, No. 147

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

As exercise becomes tedious and painful when we make use of it only as the means of health, so reading is apt to grow uneasy and burdensome, when we apply ourselves to it only for our improvement in virtue. For this reason, the virtue which we gather from a fable, or an allegory, is like the health we get by hunting; as we are engaged in an agreeable pursuit that draws us on with pleasure, and makes us insensible of the fatigues that accompany it.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1709-03-18), The Tatler, No. 147

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A quotation from Addison

A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1710-07-01), The Tatler, No. 192

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions and debates of mankind.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

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.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-09-06), The Spectator, No. 477

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
   Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow ,
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
   There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-05-18), The Spectator, No. 68

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Upon the whole, a contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1714-07-30), The Spectator, No. 574

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

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.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-08-02), The Spectator, No. 447

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

The Lord my pasture shall prepare,
And feed me with a shepherd’s care;
His presence shall my wants supply,
And guard me with a watchful eye.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Poem (1712-07-26), “Psalm 23,” st. 1, ll. 1-4, The Spectator, No. 441

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Cheerfulness is, in the first place, the best promoter of health. Repinings, and secret murmurs of heart, give imperceptible strokes to those delicate fibres of which the vital parts are composed, and wear out the machine insensibly; not to mention those violent ferments which they stir up in the blood, and those irregular disturbed motions which they raise in the animal spirits.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-05-24), The Spectator, No. 387

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-12-22), The Spectator, No. 255

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

We should esteem virtue though in a foe, and abhor vice though in a friend.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-12-08), The Spectator, No. 243

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shews 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.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-06), The Spectator, No. 215

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them; or as the Italian proverb runs, “The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger.”

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-10-09), The Spectator, No. 191

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A quotation from Addison

I have somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much pleased me. I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this purpose: What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-09-27), The Spectator, No. 177

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

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.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-09-13), The Spectator, No. 169

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

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: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behaviour is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-07-20), The Spectator, No. 122

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Every one that has been long dead has a due proportion of praise allotted him, in which, whilst he lived, his friends were too profuse, and his enemies too sparing.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-06-26), The Spectator, No. 101

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Joseph Addison -- Sir Godfrey Kneller --
oil on canvas, circa 1712

National Portrait Gallery, London.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

I used a random number generator to select this portrait. I was mostly* pleasantly surprised by the result, not only because I have an institutional connection with Addison, but also on account of my seeing the portrait strengthening my resolve to read more of Addison and Steele's essays.

* I write "mostly" because I am no lover of the Whig politics in which Addison was steeped.

The painting is one of the set of 43 Kit-cat Club portraits.

>>These portraits are of a group of influential men pledged to uphold the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 and the Protestant succession. Founded by Somers, the Lord Chancellor and the publisher Tonson, the club began meeting in Christopher Cat's tavern near Temple Bar, and took its name from his mutton pies known as Kit-cats. Members included Whig MPs and landowners as well as writers.<<

National Portrait Gallery

#Art #Portrait #BritishArt #EnglishLiterature #GodfreyKneller #JosephAddison #Essays #NationalPortraitGallery #KitcatClub

« 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.
While all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole. »

— Joseph Addison

🔗 · https://poligraf.tumblr.com/post/733925337696698368/soon-as-the-evening-shades-prevail-the-moon-takes

#quotes #JosephAddison #poetry #moon #stars #poems

« So when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. »

― Joseph Addison

🔗 · https://poligraf.tumblr.com/post/730112194607448064/so-when-an-angel-by-divine-command-with-rising

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« Music religious heat inspires,
It wakes the soul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with sublime desires,
And fits it to bespeak the Deity. »

― Joseph Addison

🔗 · https://poligraf.tumblr.com/post/728662214181011456/music-religious-heat-inspires-it-wakes-the-soul

#quotes #JosephAddison #music #soul #inspiration #elevation #DivineIntelligence

« 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

🔗 · https://poligraf.tumblr.com/post/733925337696698368/soon-as-the-evening-shades-prevail-the-moon-takes

#quotes #poetry #moon #stars #poems #JosephAddison

« So when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. »

― Joseph Addison

🔗 · https://poligraf.tumblr.com/post/730112194607448064/so-when-an-angel-by-divine-command-with-rising

#quotes #JosephAddison #poetry #angels #DivineIntelligence

« Music religious heat inspires,
It wakes the soul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with sublime desires,
And fits it to bespeak the Deity. »

― Joseph Addison

🔗 · https://poligraf.tumblr.com/post/728662214181011456/music-religious-heat-inspires-it-wakes-the-soul

#quotes #JosephAddison #music #soul #inspiration #elevation #DivineIntelligence

Frenzy and distraction

True fortitude is seen in great exploits, that justice warrants and that wisdom guides. All else is towering phrensy and distraction.

~ Joseph Addison

slip:4a617.