Joseph Addison Quotes

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

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.

Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colors.

Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art.

A religious hope does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings but makes her rejoice in them.

How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?

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

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.

By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.

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

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

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.

'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, and makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile... 'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate, and hold in balance each contending state, To threaten bold presumptuous kings with war, and answer her afflicted neighbours' prayer... Soon as her fleets appear their terrors cease.

Those who were skillful in Anatomy among the Ancients, concluded from the outward and inward Make of an Human Body, that it was the Work of a Being transcendently Wise and Powerful. As the World grew more enlightened in this Art, their Discoveries gave them fresh Opportunities of admiring the Conduct of Providence in the Formation of an Human Body.

Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.

If our zeal were true and genuine we should be much more angry with a sinner than a heretic.

The greatest parts, without discretion as observed by an elegant writer, may be fatal to their owner; as Polyphemus, deprived of his eyes, was only the more exposed on account of his enormous strength and stature.

See in what peace a Christian can die.

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

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

Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above or below him are serious.

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

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.

Who does not more admire Cicero as an author than as a consul of Rome?

Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.

A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility only, denominate men great and glorious.

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

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.

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

Whilst I yet live, let me not live in vain.

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

Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

In rising sighs and falling tears.

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.

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.

The Lord my pasture shall prepare, And feed me with a shepherd's care; His presence shall my wants supply, And guard me with a watchful eye.

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.'

For wheresoe'er I turn my ravish'd eyes, Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise, Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground.

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.

This not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

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.

Encourage innocent amusement.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

We see no where the pernicious effects of luxury on a republic more than in that of the ancient Romans, who immediately found itself poor as soon as this vice got footing among them, though they were possessed of all the riches in the world.

Should the whole frame of nature round him break, In ruin and confusion hurled, He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, And stand secure amidst a falling world.