“If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.”

No. 535 (13 November 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

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Do you have more details about the quote "If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow th…" by Joseph Addison?

Joseph Addison226

politician, writer and playwright 1672–1719

Susanna Kaysen (1948) American writer

“We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1931–2015) 11th President of India, scientist and science administrator

Source: Eternal quest: life & times of Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (2002), p. 64.

“And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?”

Ann Druyan (1949) American author and producer

“Life today is fast and full of opportunity. The complication is we think we have to do everything. The implication of this is we end up being pulled into endless distractions without pausing to really think. My position is we can make a different choice. We can discern what is really essential. We can design a life that really matters.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

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“Perhaps a man's character was like a tree, and his reputation like its shadow; the shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

As quoted in "Lincoln's Imagination" by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly (August 1879), p. 586 http://books.google.com/books?id=jOoGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA586 <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.