Quotes by Addison, Joseph




Joseph Addison (May 1, 1672 June 17, 1719) was an English politician and writer. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend, Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine..

"He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young."

Addison, Joseph on age and aging
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"I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair."

Addison, Joseph on despair    Share

"There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress."

Addison, Joseph on dress    Share

"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."

Addison, Joseph on dullness    Share

"Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm."

Addison, Joseph on editing and editors
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"What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to an human soul."

Addison, Joseph on education
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"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."

Addison, Joseph on family
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"That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?"

Addison, Joseph on fathers    Share

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"Our friends don't see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them."

Addison, Joseph on faults
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"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief."

Addison, Joseph on friends and friendship
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"Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved."

Addison, Joseph on friends and friendship
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"The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures."

Addison, Joseph on friends and friendship
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"The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover."

Addison, Joseph on friends and friendship
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"A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants..."

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

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

Addison, Joseph on amusement    Share

"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."

Addison, Joseph on happiness
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"True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions."

Addison, Joseph on happiness
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"Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."

Addison, Joseph on happiness
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"Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor."

Addison, Joseph on honor
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"The post of honor is a private station."

Addison, Joseph on honor    Share

"If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is."

Addison, Joseph on hope
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"Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity."

Addison, Joseph on humor
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"Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature."

Addison, Joseph on inconsistency    Share

"Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both."

Addison, Joseph on injury
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"There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it."

Addison, Joseph on instinct    Share

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

Addison, Joseph on insults    Share

"The disease of jealously is so malignant that is converts all it takes into its own nourishment."

Addison, Joseph on jealousy
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"Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another."

Addison, Joseph on knowledge
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"One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter."

Addison, Joseph on laughter
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"If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it."

Addison, Joseph on laughter    Share

"Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency."

Addison, Joseph on lies and lying
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"Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass."

Addison, Joseph on animals    Share

"The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves."

Addison, Joseph on appetite    Share

"What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable."

Addison, Joseph on appreciation
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"Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable."

Addison, Joseph on argument
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"A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes."

Addison, Joseph on marriage    Share

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"As vivacity is the gift of women, gravity is that of men."

Addison, Joseph on women
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"'Tis not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."

Addison, Joseph on merit    Share

"Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue."

Addison, Joseph on modesty    Share

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