Joseph Addison Quotes About Character

Quotes about: Character

• 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

  Honesty, Pain, Integrity

  Joseph Addison (1837). “The Spectator, no. 1-314”, p.251

• I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.

  Joseph Addison

  Hard Work, Character, Men

• When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.

  Joseph Addison

  Character, Men, Personality

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.571

• The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo.

  Joseph Addison

  Character, Fate, Destiny

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Francis Prévost, Francis William Blagdon (1833). “The Spectator, in Miniature: Being the Principal Religious, Moral, Humourous, Satirical and Critical Essays, in that Publication Compressed Into Two Volumes”, p.212

• Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.

  Joseph Addison

  Party, Character, Opportunity

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.46

• Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.

  Joseph Addison

  Character, Men, Vanity

  Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd, Henry George Bohn (1872). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.158

• In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

  Joseph Addison

  Wise, Running, Wisdom

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.191

• It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.

  Joseph Addison

  Fall, Passion, Character

  Joseph Addison, Thomas Tickell (1721). “Works”, p.505

• Virgil has very finely touched upon the female passion for dress and shows, in the character of Camilla; who though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular.

  Joseph Addison

  Sex, Passion, Character

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.22

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