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Joseph Addison Quotes about Plato

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There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being,--that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his

There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being,--that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.

Joseph Addison
Truth, Plato, Errors
Joseph Addison (1857). “Essays, Moral and Humorous. Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.144

Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned.

Joseph Addison
Plato, Sacrifice, Men
Sir Richard Steele, Joseph Addison (1829). “The Tatler and the Guardian: Complete in One Volume, with Notes, and a General Index”

It must be so,-Plato, thou reasonest well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'T is the divinity that stirs within us; 'T is Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

Joseph Addison
Plato, Fall, Men
'Cato' (1713) act 5, sc. 1, l. 1

Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth.

Joseph Addison
Music, Art, Plato
Joseph Addison (1867). “The Works of Joseph Addison: Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition, with Letters and Other Pieces Not Found in Ay Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.65

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

Joseph Addison
Plato, Reason, Wells
'Cato' (1713) act 5, sc. 1, l. 1

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