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Quotes by Joseph Addison

A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.
– Joseph Addison
A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.
– Joseph Addison
A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.
– Joseph Addison
A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.
– Joseph Addison
A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
– Joseph Addison
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
– Joseph Addison
A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
– Joseph Addison
Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.
– Joseph Addison
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 Addison
Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.
– Joseph Addison
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
– Joseph Addison
Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
– Joseph Addison
Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts ;in a uniform manner.
– Joseph Addison
Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.
– Joseph Addison
Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.
– Joseph Addison
He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.
– Joseph Addison
I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.
– Joseph Addison
I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: ''What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.''
– Joseph Addison
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
– Joseph Addison
I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.
– Joseph Addison
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.
– Joseph Addison
Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.
– Joseph Addison
Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!
– Joseph Addison
It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.
– Joseph Addison
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.
– Joseph Addison
Jesters do often prove prophets.
– Joseph Addison
Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.
– Joseph Addison
Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
– Joseph Addison
Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.
– Joseph Addison
Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
– Joseph Addison
Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
– Joseph Addison
Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.
– Joseph Addison
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
– Joseph Addison
Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.
– Joseph Addison
No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
– Joseph Addison
Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
– Joseph Addison
Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.
– Joseph Addison
One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success.
– Joseph Addison
Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.
– Joseph Addison
Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.
– Joseph Addison
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
– Joseph Addison
See in what peace a Christian can die.
– Joseph Addison
Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
– Joseph Addison
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
– Joseph Addison
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
– Joseph Addison
The beloved of the Almighty are: the rich who have the humility of the poor, and the poor who have the magnamity of the rich.
– Joseph Addison
The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.
– Joseph Addison
The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.
– Joseph Addison
The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.
– Joseph Addison
The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
– Joseph Addison
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
– Joseph Addison
The unassuming youth seeking instruction with humility gains good fortune.
– Joseph Addison
The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life... Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.
– Joseph Addison
The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.
– Joseph Addison
The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.
– Joseph Addison
Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
– Joseph Addison
There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
– Joseph Addison
There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
– Joseph Addison
There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
– Joseph Addison
They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.
– Joseph Addison
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
– Joseph Addison
To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.
– Joseph Addison
To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.
– Joseph Addison
To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.
– Joseph Addison
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
– Joseph Addison
''We are always doing,'' says he, ''something for posterity, but I would see posterity do something for us.''
– Joseph Addison
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.
– Joseph Addison
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
– Joseph Addison
When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.
– Joseph Addison
When somebody gives you a sexy look, you know they're trying. It's terrible! But when you smile, it's so much sexier!
– Joseph Addison
With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.
– Joseph Addison
Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.
– Joseph Addison
Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.
– Joseph Addison
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.
– Joseph Addison
If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling.
– Joseph Addison
Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.
– 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.
– Joseph Addison
How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!
– Joseph Addison
Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.
– Joseph Addison
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
– Joseph Addison
True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
– Joseph Addison
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
– Joseph Addison
Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
– Joseph Addison
There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.
– Joseph Addison
Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.
– Joseph Addison
If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
– Joseph Addison