Famous quotes by »

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison (May 1, 1672 - June 17, 1719) was an English essayist and poet

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Joseph Addison »

1 fan

Sort by:PopularityA - Z

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life; where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue Who would not be that youth What pity is it That we can die but once to serve our country

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

I think I may define taste to be that faculty of the soul which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul; and thus it may be looked on as weakness in the composition of human nature. But if we consider the frequent reliefs we receive from it and how often it breaks the gloom which is apt to depress the mind and damp our spirits, with transient, unexpected gleams of joy, one would take care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

The Fear of Death often proves Mortal, and sets People on Methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise it 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

Rate it:

True happiness... arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

What pity is it that we can die but once to serve our country

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

Rate it:

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

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

– Joseph Addison

Rate it:

Share your thoughts on Joseph Addison's quotes with the community:

0 Comments

Notify me of new comments via email.

Quote of the Day Today's Quote | Archive

Would you like us to send you a FREE inspiring quote delivered to your inbox daily?

Citation

Use the citation below to add this author page to your bibliography:

Style:MLAChicagoAPA

"Joseph Addison Quotes." Quotes.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 17 May 2024. <https://www.quotes.net/authors/Joseph+Addison+Quotes>.

Missing a quote of Joseph Addison?

Know another good quote of Joseph Addison? Don't keep it to yourself!

The Web's Largest Resource for

Famous Quotes & Sayings

A Member Of The STANDS4 Network

Our favorite collection of

Famous Authors

Al Capone
1899 - 1947
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 - 1948
Golda Meir
1898 - 1978
Abraham Lincoln
1809 - 1865
Mother Teresa
1910 - 1997
Edgar Allan Poe
1809 - 1849
Albert Einstein
1879 - 1955

Browse Quotes.net

#A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Quiz

Are you a quotes master?

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

A Gone with the Wind

B Doctor Zhivago

C Casablanca

D Django Unchained