Joseph Addison Quotes

519 Sourced Quotes

The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers,
And heavily in clouds brings on the day,
The great, the important day,
Big with the fate Of Cato, and of Rome.

Joseph Addison
It is very wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards with no conversation but what is made up of a few game-phrases, and no other ideas but those of black or red spots arranged together in different figures. Would not a man laugh to hear any one of his species complaining that life is short?

Joseph Addison
These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.

Joseph Addison
There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence ; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.

Joseph Addison
Through all Eternity to Thee
A joyful Song I'll raise,
For oh! Eternity's too short
To utter all thy Praise.

Joseph Addison
Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable.

Joseph Addison
The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.

Joseph Addison
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
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
There is no passion which steals into the heart more imperceptibly, and covers itself under more disguises, than pride.

Joseph Addison
Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire.

Joseph Addison
A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory around it, and darts a luster through a whole sentence.

Joseph Addison
Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.

Joseph Addison
The schoolboy counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married.

Joseph Addison
I would fain ask one of these bigotted Infidels, supposing all the great Points of Atheism … were laid together and formed into a kind of Creed, according to the Opinions of the most celebrated Atheists; I say, supposing such a Creed as this were formed, and imposed upon any one People in the World, whether it would not require an infinitely greater Measure of Faith, than any Set of Articles which they so violently oppose.

Joseph Addison
In love to our wives there is desire, to our sons there is ambition; but in that to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

Joseph Addison
The very first discovery of beauty strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties.

Joseph Addison
The ideal man bears the accidents of life
With dignity and grace, the best of circumstances.

Joseph Addison
Notwithstanding that natural love in brutes is much more violent and intense than in rational creatures, Providence has taken care that it should be no longer troublesome to the parent than it is useful to the young; for so soon as the wants of the latter cease, the mother withdraws her fondness, and leaves them to provide for themselves.

Joseph Addison
I Have often thought if the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool. There are infinite reveries, numberless extravagances, and a perpetual train of vanities which pass through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words.

Joseph Addison
Virtues that shun the day and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calm of life.

Joseph Addison
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
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait,
And from your judgment must expect my fate.

Joseph Addison
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
Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Joseph Addison
There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.

Joseph Addison
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants; and secondly, how much more unhappy he might be than he really is.

Joseph Addison
The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang even at the moment of parting; yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half of its bitterness when uttered in accents that breathe love to the last sigh.

Joseph Addison
The world is so full of ill-nature that I have lampoons sent me by people who cannot spell, and satires composed by those who scarce know how to write.

Joseph Addison
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