Joseph Addison - Man Quotes

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The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo.

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
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
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
Should a writer single out and point his raillery at particular persons, or satirize the miserable, he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man if he could please himself.

Joseph Addison
Let guilt or fear
Disturb man's rest; Cato knows neither of them,
Indifferent in his choice, to sleep or die.

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
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
Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense; there are forty men of wit for one man of good sense; and he that will carry nothing about with him but gold, will be every day at a loss for readier change.

Joseph Addison
Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

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
One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.

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
Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.

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
Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.

Joseph Addison
The most exquisite words and finest strokes of an author are those which very often appear the most doubtful and exceptionable to a man who wants a relish for polite learning; and they are those which a sour undistinguishing critic generally attacks with the greatest violence.

Joseph Addison
Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves.

Joseph Addison
It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belongto his Neighbour.

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

Joseph Addison
He only is a great man who can neglect the applause of the multitude and enjoy himself independent of its favor.

Joseph Addison
A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.

Joseph Addison
Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding places in a voluminous writer.

Joseph Addison
It is odd to consider the connection between despotism and barbarity, and how the making one person more than man makes the rest less.

Joseph Addison
Were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him than from those evils which had really befallen him.

Joseph Addison
To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.

Joseph Addison
It must be so — Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
O falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.

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

Joseph Addison
If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

Joseph Addison
A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.

Joseph Addison