Joseph Addison famous quotes

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

#Inspirational #Life #Friendship

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.
-- Joseph Addison

#Inspirational #Beauty #Soul

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

#Love #Inspirational #Life

Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
-- Joseph Addison

#Happiness #Inspiration #Health

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
-- Joseph Addison

#Men #Aggravation #Literature

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
-- Joseph Addison

#Life #Friday #Sunday

The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship.
-- Joseph Addison

#Real #Life Is #Human Life

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

#Compassion #Animal #Welfare

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

#Friendship #Real Friends #Secret

Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.
-- Joseph Addison

#Moon #Listening #Stories

We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.
-- Joseph Addison

#Art #Nature #Pleasant

Music raises in the mind of the hearer great conceptions: it strengthens and advances praise into rapture.
-- Joseph Addison

#Music #Mind #Praise

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.
-- Joseph Addison

#Men #Blessing #Inner Peace

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

#Inspirational #Exercise #Soul

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.
-- Joseph Addison

#Happiness #Self #Talking

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

#Pain #Honesty #Integrity

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
-- Joseph Addison

#Stupid #War #Believe

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

#Inspirational #Life #Success

All of heaven we have below.
-- Joseph Addison

#Music #Heaven

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

#Liberty #Eternity #Hours

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.
-- Joseph Addison

#Men #Vices #Bears

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
-- Joseph Addison

#Heart #Men #Care

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

#Country #Integrity #Patriotic

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

#Men #Conceited #Talking

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.
-- Joseph Addison

#Birthday #Daughter #Fathers Day

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

#Money #People #Get Money

When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I'm lost, in wonder, love and praise.
-- Joseph Addison

#Views #Soul #Rising

Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
-- Joseph Addison

#Friendship Love #World #Virtue

When a woman comes to her class, she does not employ her time in making herself look more advantageously what she really is, but endeavours to be as much another creature as she possibly can. Whether this happens because they stay so long and attend their work so diligently that they forget the faces and persons, which they first sat down with, or whatever it is, they seldom rise from the toilet the same woman they appeared when they began to dress
-- Joseph Addison

#Maturity #Class #Long

One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.
-- Joseph Addison

#Powerful #Mind #Important

Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
-- Joseph Addison

#Love #Soul #Pulse

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

#Education #Running #Clouds

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

#Men #Attention #Absurd

There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
-- Joseph Addison

#Justice #Virtue #Godlike

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
-- Joseph Addison

#Laughter #Men #Faculty

If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
-- Joseph Addison

#Happiness #Men #Feelings

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.
-- Joseph Addison

#Ornaments #Literature #Modesty

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.
-- Joseph Addison

#Reading #Space #Empty

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

#Inspiring #Perfect #Excellence

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.
-- Joseph Addison

#House #Imperfection #Literature

One hope no sooner dies in us but another rises up in its stead. We are apt to fancy that we shall be happy and satisfied if we possess ourselves of such and such particular enjoyments; but either by reason of their emptiness, or the natural inquietude of the mind, we have no sooner gained one point, but we extend our hopes to another. We still find new inviting scenes and landscapes lying behind those which at a distance terminated our view.
-- Joseph Addison

#Hope #Distance #Lying

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

#Political #Politics #Oppression

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

#Happiness #Patience #Pain

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
-- Joseph Addison

#Inspirational #Education #Reading

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

#Humility #Pride #Men

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.
-- Joseph Addison

#Inspiring #Education #Art

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

#Book #Legacy #Generations

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

#Life #Ideas #Imagination

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

#Song #Garden #Animal

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

#Real #Eye #Men

Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.
-- Joseph Addison

#Reading #Book #Exercise

Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.
-- Joseph Addison

#Strength #Faith #Practice

When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.
-- Joseph Addison

#Beautiful #Kings #Tombstone

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
-- Joseph Addison

#Thinking #Talking

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
-- Joseph Addison

#Advice #Literature #Good Advice

Let freedom never perish in your hands.
-- Joseph Addison

#4th Of July #Hands

Quick sensitivity is inseperable from a ready understanding.
-- Joseph Addison

#Understanding #Sensitivity #Ready

The post of honour is a private station.
-- Joseph Addison

#Literature #Honour

There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance
-- Joseph Addison

#Thankful #Gratitude #Exercise

Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
-- Joseph Addison

#Beauty #Absence #Nature Beauty

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.
-- Joseph Addison

#Positive #Wise #Laughter

Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.
-- Joseph Addison

#Health #Cheerfulness

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
-- Joseph Addison

#Music #Wisdom #Heaven

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.
-- Joseph Addison

#Office #Together #Magnificence

The care of our national commerce redounds more to the riches and prosperity of the public than any other act of government.
-- Joseph Addison

#Government #Care #Riches

Supposing all the great points of atheism were formed into a kind of creed, I would fain ask whether it would not require an infinite greater measure of faith than any set of articles which they so violently oppose.
-- Joseph Addison

#Atheism #Kind #Infinite

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.
-- Joseph Addison

#Wrath #Safety #Atheism

Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to their mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the nations of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another and be united together by their common interest.
-- Joseph Addison

#Taken #Eye #Blessing

Our Grub-street biographers watch for the death of a great man like so many undertakers on purpose to make a penny of him.
-- Joseph Addison

#Men #Watches #Purpose

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

#Men #Degrees #Elegance

Troops of heroes undistinguished die.
-- Joseph Addison

#Hero #Battle #Troops

That courage which arises from the sense of our duty, and from the fear of offending Him that made us, acts always in a uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right reason.
-- Joseph Addison

#Offending #Bravery #Uniforms

Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.
-- Joseph Addison

#Authorship #Materials

Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves.
-- Joseph Addison

#Men #Satisfaction #Great Men

I consider time as an in immense ocean, in which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up.
-- Joseph Addison

#Ocean #Noble

It happened very providentially, to the honor of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height.
-- Joseph Addison

#Christian #Art #Dark

A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors.
-- Joseph Addison

#Hands #Law #Giving

What can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being?
-- Joseph Addison

#Bible #Ideas #Giving

Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable.
-- Joseph Addison

#Complacency #Equal

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

Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she has touched it with vermilion, planted in it a double row of ivory, made it the seat of smiles and blushes, lighted it up and enlivened it with the brightness of the eyes, hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light.
-- Joseph Addison

#Art #Eye #Light

In the loss of an object we do not proportion our grief to the real value it bears, but to the value our fancies set upon it.
-- Joseph Addison

#Real #Grief #Loss

Were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him than from those evils which had really befallen him.
-- Joseph Addison

#Fear #Men #Evil

What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?
-- Joseph Addison

#Crush #Fear #Men

The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.
-- Joseph Addison

#Flattery #Persons

E'en the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom, and trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.
-- Joseph Addison

#Weed #Rocks #Myrtle

There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.
-- Joseph Addison

#Eye #Mirth #Innocence

Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news. If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.
-- Joseph Addison

#Dream #Future #Men

It is wonderful to see persons of sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards.
-- Joseph Addison

#Passing Away #Together #Cards

The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing.
-- Joseph Addison

#Writing #Lapses #Genius

Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant.
-- Joseph Addison

#Understanding #Doubt #Gold

Good-breeding shows itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.
-- Joseph Addison

#Eye #Ordinary #Breeding

One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.
-- Joseph Addison

#Men #Excess #World

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

#Men #Good Nature #Good Humor

In rising sighs and falling tears.
-- Joseph Addison

#Grief #Fall #Tears

Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it.
-- Joseph Addison

#Fables #Instruction

A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.
-- Joseph Addison

#Reading #Men #Example

Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.
-- Joseph Addison

#Opposites #Balance #Weight

Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the contempt of which is great.
-- Joseph Addison

#Contempt

One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse; but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.
-- Joseph Addison

#Thinking #Would Be #Assembly