Joseph Addison Quotations | Page 2

We are growing serious, and let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull

We are always doing," says he, "something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves

Through all eternity to thee, a joyful song I'll raise; for oh! Eternity's too short to utter all thy praise.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.

The spacious firmament on high, / And all the blue ethereal sky, / And spangled heavens, a shining frame, / Their great Original proclaim.

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

There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch.

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

No vices are so incurable as those which men are apt to glory in

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart, and his next to escape the censures of the world.

A man should always consider how much more unhappy he might be than he is

Pray consider what a figure a man would make in the republic of letters.

Our disputants put me in mind of the scuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible.

Young people soon give, and forget insults, but old age is slow in both.

In all thy humors, 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

If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world

It must be so - Plato, thou reason'st well! -/ Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, / This longing after immortality?

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.

Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, filling it with a steady and perpetual serenity

He thought he was a wit, and he was half right.

Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty

The important question is not what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.

Encourage innocent amusement.

Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to their mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the nations of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another and be united together by their common interest.

When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? My Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.

No one is more cherished in this world than someone who lightens the burden of another. Thank you.

Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.

True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.

The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.

There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance

We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.

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

Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.

One hope no sooner dies in us but another rises up in its stead. We are apt to fancy that we shall be happy and satisfied if we possess ourselves of such and such particular enjoyments; but either by reason of their emptiness, or the natural inquietude of the mind, we have no sooner gained one point, but we extend our hopes to another. We still find new inviting scenes and landscapes lying behind those which at a distance terminated our view.

When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.

One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.

I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.

What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

Colors speak all languages.

All of heaven we have below.

There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.

If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.

Quick sensitivity is inseperable from a ready understanding.

A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

When a woman comes to her class, she does not employ her time in making herself look more advantageously what she really is, but endeavours to be as much another creature as she possibly can. Whether this happens because they stay so long and attend their work so diligently that they forget the faces and persons, which they first sat down with, or whatever it is, they seldom rise from the toilet the same woman they appeared when they began to dress

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.

Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.

Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.

Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.

Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.

Let freedom never perish in your hands.

The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.

Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.

Music raises in the mind of the hearer great conceptions: it strengthens and advances praise into rapture.

They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.

Thus I live in the world rather as a Spectator of mankind, than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part of life.

Good-breeding shows itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.

Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned.

Every man in the time of courtship and in the first entrance of marriage, puts on a behavior like my correspondent's holiday suit.

It happened very providentially, to the honor of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height.

Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the contempt of which is great.

The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.

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

The care of our national commerce redounds more to the riches and prosperity of the public than any other act of government.

Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable.

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.

It is pleasant to see a notorious profligate seized with a concern for religion, and converting his spleen into zeal.

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

One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse; but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.

There are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of Nature, find work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.

The pleasantest part of a man's life is generally that which passes in courtship, provided his passion be sincere, and the party beloved kind with discretion. Love, desire, hope, all the pleasing emotions of the soul, rise in the pursuit.

What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?

E'en the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom, and trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.

There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.

Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news. If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.

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

The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing.

Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant.

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

Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.

In rising sighs and falling tears.

The ungrown glories of his beamy hair.

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

The head has the most beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station, in a human figure.

It must be a prospect pleasing to God Himself to see His creation forever beautifying in His eyes, and drawing nearer Him by greater degrees of resemblance.

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.

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.

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.

I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself--as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand.

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.

Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.