Top 100 Joseph Addison Quotes
#2. Writing again, he stressed that the events of war are always uncertain. Then, paraphrasing a favorite line from the popular play Cato by Joseph Addison - a line that General Washington, too, would often call upon - Adams told her, We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.
David McCullough
#3. 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
#4. Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.
Joseph Addison
#5. Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.
Joseph Addison
#6. Conspiracies no sooner should be formed Than executed.
Joseph Addison
#8. We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them.
Joseph Addison
#9. As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.
Joseph Addison
#11. Government mitigates the inequality of power, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow-subjects.
Joseph Addison
#12. 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
#13. There is no talent so pernicious as eloquence to those who have it under command.
Joseph Addison
#14. 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
#15. Waning moons their settled periods keep, to swell the billows and ferment the deep.
Joseph Addison
#17. The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.
Joseph Addison
#18. There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
Joseph Addison
#19. Hunting is not a proper employment for a thinking man.
Joseph Addison
#20. 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
#21. It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.
Joseph Addison
#22. A money-lender
he serves you in the present tense; he lends you in the conditional mood; keeps you in the conjunctive; and ruins you in the future.
Joseph Addison
#23. Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion.
Joseph Addison
#24. A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.
Joseph Addison
#25. The ways of heaven are dark and intricate;
Puzzled in mazes, and perplext with errors.
Joseph Addison
#26. Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
Joseph Addison
#27. True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.
Joseph Addison
#28. Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
Joseph Addison
#29. We have in England a particular bashfulness in every thing that regards religion.
Joseph Addison
#30. 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
#31. Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
Joseph Addison
#32. Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.
Joseph Addison
#33. Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.
Joseph Addison
#34. Let echo, too, perform her part, Prolonging every note with art; And in a low expiring strain, Play all the comfort o'er again.
Joseph Addison
#35. Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.
Joseph Addison
#36. Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
Joseph Addison
#37. I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what be calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute.
Joseph Addison
#38. The peacock in all his pride does not display half the colors that appear in the garments of a British lady when she is dressed.
Joseph Addison
#39. Honor's a fine imaginary notion, that draws in raw and unexperienced men to real mischiefs.
Joseph Addison
#40. There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride.
Joseph Addison
#41. Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
Joseph Addison
#42. One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.
Joseph Addison
#43. We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.
Joseph Addison
#44. There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.
Joseph Addison
#45. 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.
Joseph Addison
#46. Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.
Joseph Addison
#47. Plutarch says very finely that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies.
Joseph Addison
#48. My death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me.
Joseph Addison
#50. A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts
Joseph Addison
#51. There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being,
that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.
Joseph Addison
#52. Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
Joseph Addison
#53. What can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being?
Joseph Addison
#54. Our 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 Addison
#55. Temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor.
Joseph Addison
#56. E'en the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom, and trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.
Joseph Addison
#58. 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.
Joseph Addison
#59. The disease of jealously is so malignant that is converts all it takes into its own nourishment.
Joseph Addison
#60. My voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?
Joseph Addison
#61. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
Joseph Addison
#62. It is a great presumption to ascribe our successes to our own management, and not to esteem ourselves upon any blessing, rather as it is the bounty of heaven, than the acquisition of our own prudence.
Joseph Addison
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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.
Joseph Addison
#66. It is pleasant to see a notorious profligate seized with a concern for religion, and converting his spleen into zeal.
Joseph Addison
#67. No one is more cherished in this world than someone who lightens the burden of another. Thank you.
Joseph Addison
#68. A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
Joseph Addison
#69. Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.
Joseph Addison
#70. Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.
Joseph Addison
#71. 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
#72. Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant, and, as some say, of the first that was ever written.
Joseph Addison
#73. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.
Joseph Addison
#74. Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.
Joseph Addison
#75. 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
#76. Sir Francis Bacon observed that a well-written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses' serpent, that immediately swallowed up and devoured those of the Egyptians.
Joseph Addison
#77. The time never lies heavy upon him; it is impossible for him to be alone.
Joseph Addison
#78. It is of unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions at some laudable end.
Joseph Addison
#79. There is a sort of economy in Providence that one shall excel where another is defective, in order to make men more useful to each other, and mix them in society.
Joseph Addison
#81. 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.
Joseph Addison
#82. We make provisions for this life as if it were never to have an end, and for the other life as though it were never to have a beginning.
Joseph Addison
#83. A few persons of an odious and despised country could not have filled the world with believers, had they not shown undoubted credentials from the divine person who sent them on such a message.
Joseph Addison
#84. When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault to love;
The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,
Sink in the soft captivity together.
Joseph Addison
#85. This party spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it has likewise a very great one upon our judgments.
Joseph Addison
#86. Music raises in the mind of the hearer great conceptions: it strengthens and advances praise into rapture.
Joseph Addison
#87. I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter.
Joseph Addison
#88. Our friends don't see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them.
Joseph Addison
#89. I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition.
Joseph Addison
#91. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.
Joseph Addison
#92. 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
#93. Half the misery of human life might be extinguished if men would alleviate the general curse they lie under by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence, and humanity.
Joseph Addison
#94. Oh! think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods.
Joseph Addison
#95. A religious hope does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings but makes her rejoice in them.
Joseph Addison
#96. A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
Joseph Addison
#97. Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
Joseph Addison
#98. Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man.
Joseph Addison
#99. Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.
Joseph Addison
#100. Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.
Joseph Addison
