Joseph Addison - Sense Quotes

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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 opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience.

Joseph Addison
Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth.

Joseph Addison
Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she has touched it with vermilion, planted in it a double row of ivory, made it the seat of smiles and blushes, lighted it up and enlivened it with the brightness of the eyes, hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light.

Joseph Addison
A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence; but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.

Joseph Addison
Good Nature, and Evenness of Temper, will give you an easie Companion for Life; Vertue and good Sense, an agreeable Friend; Love and Constancy, a good Wife or Husband. Where we meet one Person with all these Accomplishments, we find an Hundred without any one of them.

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
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

Joseph Addison
Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses; it fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas; — converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments.

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
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
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
The passion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair sex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who desire to be admired for that which only deserves admiration.

Joseph Addison
I have somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much pleased me. I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this purpose; What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.

Joseph Addison
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
Courage that grows from constitution very often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it, and when it is only a kind of instinct in the Soul breaks out on all occasions without judgment or discretion. That courage which proceeds 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
A fine coat is but a livery when the person who wears it discovers no higher sense than that of a footman.

Joseph Addison
Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

Joseph Addison
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,
Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.

Joseph Addison
It is wonderful to see persons of sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards.

Joseph Addison
The sense of honour is of so fine and delicate a nature, that it is only to be met with in minds which are naturally noble, or in such as have been cultivated by good examples, or a refined education.

Joseph Addison
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
Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries. A marriage of love is pleasant; a marriage of interest, easy; and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.

Joseph Addison
What means this heaviness that hangs upon me?
This lethargy that creeps through all my senses?
Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care,
Sinks down to rest.

Joseph Addison
The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.

Joseph Addison