Joseph Addison Quotes

519 Sourced Quotes

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

Joseph Addison
It is always to be understood, that a lady takes all you detract from the rest of her sex to be a gift to her.

Joseph Addison
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.

Joseph Addison
The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he does not know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts — or, in other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and the other always enjoying it.

Joseph Addison
'Tis liberty crowns Britannia's Isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.

Joseph Addison
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
Where have my ravish'd senses been!
What joys, what wonders, have I seen!
The scene yet stands before my eye,
A thousand glorious deeds that lie
In deep futurity obscure,
Fights and triumphs immature,
Heroes immers'd in time's dark womb,
Ripening for mighty years to come,
Break forth, and, to the day display'd,
My soft inglorious hours upbraid.
Transported with so bright a scheme,
My waking life appears a dream.

Joseph Addison
An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman.

Joseph Addison
There is nothing which strengthens faith more than the observance of morality.

Joseph Addison
With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it.

Joseph Addison
It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.

Joseph Addison
There in nothing in which men more deceive themselves than in what they call zeal.

Joseph Addison
Content thyself to be obscurely good.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honor is a private station.

Joseph Addison
The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them; or as the Italian proverb runs, "The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger."

Joseph Addison
Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

Joseph Addison
If gratitude, when exerted towards another, naturally produces a very pleasing sensation in the mind of a grateful man, it exalts the soul into rapture when it is employed on this great object of gratitude to the beneficent Being who has given us everything we already possess, and from whom we expect everything we yet hope for.

Joseph Addison
Where vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.

Joseph Addison
Curse on his virtues! they've undone his country.
Such popular humanity is treason.

Joseph Addison
In doing what we ought we deserve no praise,
Because it is our duty.

Joseph Addison
When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault of love;
The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,
Sink in the soft captivity together.

Joseph Addison
We are growing serious, and,
Let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull.

Joseph Addison
Our Grub-street biographers watch the death of a great man like so many undertakers on purpose to make a penny of him.

Joseph Addison
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
When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love and praise.

Joseph Addison
In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou 'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

Joseph Addison
Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied; like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.

Joseph Addison
Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

Joseph Addison
In my Lucia's absence
Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden;
I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear,
And grief, and rage and love rise up at once,
And with variety of pain distract me.

Joseph Addison
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
'Tis not my talent to conceal my thoughts,
Or carry smiles and sunshine in my face,
When discontent sits heavy at my heart.

Joseph Addison