“An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.”
No. 562 (2 July 1714).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Joseph Addison 226
politician, writer and playwright 1672–1719Related quotes
“A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.”
Source: The League of Frightened Men
Ornamenta Rationalia http://books.google.com/books?id=VHNUAAAAYAAJ&q="He+that+defers+his+charity+'till+he+is+dead+is+if+a+man+weighs+it"+"rather+liberal+of+another+man's+than+of+his+own"&pg=PA298#v=onepage #55
Sourced to the book, The Ascent of Man (1973), BBC Books: London, Chapter 13: The Long Childhood, p. 330.
The Ascent of Man (1973)
Context: We are all afraid - for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.
25 October 2000, House of Commons, Prime Minister's Questions.
2000
4 Burr. Part IV., 2379.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)
Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 11, edited by George Birkbeck Hill