The moral virtues, without religion are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.
Joseph AddisonAmong those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
Joseph AddisonOur delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.
Joseph AddisonTo be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.
Joseph AddisonComplaisance, 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