Joseph Addison quotes:

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  • 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.

  • Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Those Marriages generally abound most with Love and Constancy, that are preceded by a long Courtship.

  • True happiness 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.

  • Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

  • Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

  • 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.

  • The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.

  • I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

  • A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.

  • Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

  • 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.

  • Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.

  • Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

  • 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.

  • Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

  • 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.

  • A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

  • 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.

  • A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

  • The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.

  • There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

  • Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.

  • An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

  • With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.

  • A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

  • The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

  • A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.

  • Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

  • Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.

  • Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.

  • To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.

  • Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

  • Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter.

  • Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.

  • True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.

  • A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.

  • It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.

  • My death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me.

  • An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman.

  • 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.

  • Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves.

  • To this end, nothing is to be more carefully consulted than plainness. In a lady's attire this is the single excellence; for to be what some people call fine, is the same vice, in that case, as to be florid is in writing or speaking.

  • 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.

  • The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.

  • Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

  • 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!

  • A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

  • 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.

  • If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend.

  • 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.

  • The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.

  • When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

  • 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.'

  • 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.

  • Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied; like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.

  • Cleanliness may be defined to be the emblem of purity of mind.

  • A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

  • Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.

  • It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belongto his Neighbour.

  • Every man in the time of courtship and in the first entrance of marriage, puts on a behavior like my correspondent's holiday suit.

  • Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible.

  • The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.

  • Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

  • An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience.

  • But silence never shows itself to so great an advantage, as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.

  • 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.

  • From hence, let fierce contending nations know, what dire effects from civil discord flow.

  • When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.

  • There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion.

  • Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

  • If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.

  • Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

  • For ever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine.

  • A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.

  • The spacious firmament on high, And all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim.

  • The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.

  • Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit.

  • When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.

  • 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.

  • The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.

  • Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.

  • I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

  • They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.

  • There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

  • Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

  • Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.

  • Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.

  • There are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of Nature, find work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.

  • A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.

  • A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.

  • All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter

  • The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

  • No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

  • The Gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength, and throw our into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.

  • Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.

  • The sense of honour is of so fine and delicate a nature, that it is only to be met with in minds which are naturally noble, or in such as have been cultivated by good examples, or a refined education.

  • The post of honour is a private station.

  • The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship.

  • Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.

  • Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.

  • Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.

  • Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.

  • Wine displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.

  • There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, "That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults." Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.

  • From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life; where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor.

  • In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

  • In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.

  • One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.

  • A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.

  • T is liberty crowns Britannia's Isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.

  • The man who will live above his present circumstances, is in great danger of soon living beneath them; or as the Italian proverb says, "The man that lives by hope, will die by despair.

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