Joseph Addison - Virtue Quotes

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Thy father's merit sets thee up to view,
And shows thee in the fairest point of light,
To make thy virtues, or thy faults, conspicuous.

Joseph Addison
Some virtues are only seen in affliction and some in prosperity.

Joseph Addison
The friendships of the world are oft
Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure;
Ours has severest virtue for its basis,
And such a friendship ends not but with life.

Joseph Addison
There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.

Joseph Addison
Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.

Joseph Addison
True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.

Joseph Addison
A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.

Joseph Addison
When love once pleas admission to our hearts,
(In spite of all the virtue we can boast),
The woman that deliberates is lost.

Joseph Addison
When love once pleads admission to our hearts,
In spite of all the virtue we can boast,
The woman that deliberates is lost.

Joseph Addison
It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.

Joseph Addison
So pernicious a thing is wit, when it is not tempered with virtue and humanity.

Joseph Addison
The gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength, and throw out into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.

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

Joseph Addison
Gifts and alms are the expressions, not the essence, of this virtue.

Joseph Addison
Great souls by instinct to each other turn,
Demand alliance, and in friendship burn;
A sudden friendship, while with stretched-out rays
They meet each other, mingling blaze with blaze.
Polished in courts, and hardened in the field,
Renowned for conquest, and in council skilled,
Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood
Of mounting spirits, and fermenting blood:
Lodged in the soul, with virtue overruled,
Inflamed by reason, and by reason cooled,
In hours of peace content to be unknown.
And only in the field of battle shown:
To souls like these, in mutual friendship joined,
Heaven dares intrust the cause of humankind.

Joseph Addison