Joseph Addison

'T is not in mortals to command success, But we 'll do more, Sempronius, - we 'll deserve it.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places in a voluminous writer.

It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.

Round-heads and wooden-shoes are standing jokes.

It must be so, Plato, thou reason'st well!

'We are always doing', says he, 'something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us.'

An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.

Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.