“What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a…” — Joseph Addison

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

A rebuke to the habit of judging by faults alone · The Spectator

About Joseph Addison

1 May 1672–17 June 1719

Joseph Addison, born on 1 May 1672 at Milston in Wiltshire and dead on 17 June 1719 at Holland House in Kensington, was one of the central makers of modern English prose. Poet, critic, dramatist, journalist, civil servant, parliamentarian, and Whig public intellectual, he achieved an influence out of proportion to the…

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