Unbounded courage and compassion join'd, Tempering each other in the victor's mind, Alternately proclaim him good and great, And make the hero and the man complete.
Joseph AddisonRead
It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the idea that all ideas have been explored before, and our role is to express them in unique ways.
Joseph Addison expresses the notion that in today's world, it is unlikely for anyone to come up with entirely original observations or ideas in morality, art, or science since many have been previously explored. Instead, our task is to reframe and represent the thoughts of humanity with greater strength, beauty, or uniqueness, thus making them resonate more profoundly with others.
Themes
OriginalityExpressionCreativityArtPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about creativity at an art conference.
More from Joseph Addison
All quotes →Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
Joseph AddisonRead
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
Joseph AddisonRead
Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.
Joseph AddisonRead
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
Joseph AddisonRead
There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.
Joseph AddisonRead
Similar quotes
People should not be in a position where their children have access to weapons and ammunition.
Joe BidenRead
Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbing - resistance to experiencing our pain for the world and other beings.
Joanna MacyRead
The fact that so many people choose to live in ways that narrow the community of fate to a very limited set of others and to define the rest as threatening to their way of life and values is deeply worrying because this contemporary form of tribalism, and the ideologies that support it, enable them to deny complex and more crosscutting mutual interdependencies-local, national, and international-and to elude their own role in creating long-term threats to their own wellbeing and that of others.
Margaret LeviRead
The Middle Ages burned its heretics and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs.
Harold InnisRead
The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.
Ezra Taft BensonRead
Nothing is sadder than laughter; nothing more beautiful, more magnificent, more uplifting and enriching than the terror of deep despair.
Federico FelliniRead