Joseph Addison Quotes

519 Sourced Quotes

That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out.

Joseph Addison
Honour's a sacred tie, the law of kings,
The noble mind's distinguishing perfection
That aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her,
And imitates her actions where she is not:
It is not to be sported with.

Joseph Addison
Who rant by note, and through the gamut rage; in songs and airs express their martial fire; combat in trills, and in a fugue expire.

Joseph Addison
There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch.

Joseph Addison
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
O Dormer, how can I behold thy fate,
And not the wonders of thy youth relate;
How can I see the gay, the brave, the young,
Fall in the cloud of war, and lie unsung!
In joys of conquest he resigns his breath,
And, filled with England's glory, smiles in death.

Joseph Addison
Plutarch says very finely that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies.

Joseph Addison
O Lucius, I am sick of this bad world!
The day-light and the sun grow painful to me.

Joseph Addison
I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what he calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute.

Joseph Addison
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
I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shews 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
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
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
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.

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

Joseph Addison
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behaviour is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.

Joseph Addison
Fain would I Raphael's godlike art rehearse,
And show th' immortal labours in my verse,
Where from themingled strength of shade and light
A new creation rises to my sight,
Such heavenly figures from his pencil flow,
So warm with life his blended colours glow.
From theme to theme with secret pleasure tost,
Amidst the soft variety I 'm lost:
Here pleasing airs my ravish'd soul confound
With circling notes and labyrinths of sound;
Here domes and temples rise in distant views,
And opening palaces invite my Muse.

Joseph Addison
A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.

Joseph Addison
When a man has been guilty of any vice or folly, I think the best atonement he can make for it is to warn others not to fall into the like.

Joseph Addison
An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.

Joseph Addison
Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it; an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition.

Joseph Addison
Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either by the prejudice of education or by a deference to the judgment of those who perhaps in their own hearts disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude.

Joseph Addison
The wildness of those compositions which go by the name of essays.

Joseph Addison
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.

Joseph Addison
Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.

Joseph Addison
Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.

Joseph Addison
'Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we'll do more, Sempronius; we'll deserve it.

Joseph Addison
Our Grubstreet biographers…watch for the death of a great man, like so many undertakers, on purpose to make a penny of him.

Joseph Addison
A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.

Joseph Addison
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

Joseph Addison