Joseph Addison

Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

— Joseph Addison

There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.

— Joseph Addison

With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.

— Joseph Addison

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

— Joseph Addison

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

— Joseph Addison

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

— Joseph Addison

There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch.

— Joseph Addison

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of ;antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.

— Joseph Addison

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

— Joseph Addison

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.

— Joseph Addison

There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.

— Joseph Addison

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

— Joseph Addison

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts ;in a uniform manner.

— Joseph Addison

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

— Joseph Addison

The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.

— Joseph Addison

See in what peace a Christian can die.

— Joseph Addison

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

— Joseph Addison

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

— 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

Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.

— Joseph Addison

Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.

— Joseph Addison

The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.

— Joseph Addison

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.

— Joseph Addison

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants...

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.

— Joseph Addison

The post of honor is a private station.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.

— Joseph Addison

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

Tis not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

— Joseph Addison

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

— 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

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

— Joseph Addison

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

— Joseph Addison

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

— Joseph Addison

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

— Joseph Addison

What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.

— Joseph Addison

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

We are always doing, says he, something for posterity, but I would see posterity do something for us.

— Joseph Addison

Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.

— Joseph Addison

It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.

— Joseph Addison

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

— Joseph Addison

Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

— Joseph Addison

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

— Joseph Addison

Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.

— Joseph Addison

Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!

— Joseph Addison

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

— Joseph Addison

A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.

— Joseph Addison