Joseph Addison (1672–1719) was an English essayist, poet, dramatist, and Whig politician. He is renowned for his unornamented prose style, which marked the end of the mannered and extravagant writing of the 17th century.
Born in Milston, Wiltshire, Addison was educated at Charterhouse, Queen’s College, and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he became a fellow. Addison found favor with the Whigs after he published The Campaign (1705,) a poem celebrating Marlborough’s victory at the Battle of Blenheim. Appointed under-secretary of state in 1706, he served as the Member of Parliament for Lostwithiel 1708–19, and became secretary of state 1717–18.
Addison’s close friendship with the writer Richard Steele and the satirist Jonathan Swift led to his involvement in the Tatler magazine 1709–10. Addison is best known for his contributions to Steele’s daily newspaper The Spectator. Addison’s aesthetics as essays had a significant influence on eighteenth-century aesthetic theory, specifically on Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant’s accounts of the sublime.
Addison was also famous as the author of Cato (1713,) a play that enjoyed tremendous popularity in both Britain and America for its depiction of patriotism and stoical virtue.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Joseph Addison
Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Vanity
Content has a kindly influence on the soul of man, in respect of every being to whom he stands related. It extinguishes all murmuring, repining, and ingratitude toward that Being who has allotted us our part to act in the world. It destroys all inordinate ambition; gives sweetness to the conversation, and serenity to all the thoughts; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire of them.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Contentment
Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.—It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off, in some measure, from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Goodness, Attitude
Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men, as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Cunning
I am wonderfully delighted to see a body of men thriving in their own fortunes, and at the same time promoting the public stock; or, in other words, raising estates for their own families by bringing into their country whatever is wanting, and carrying out of it whatever is superfluous.
—Joseph Addison
When a woman comes to her glass, 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.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Women
Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some of his weaknesses and infirmities.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Fame
The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only.—Good breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart and act a part of continued restraint, while Nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented.
—Joseph Addison
One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Laughter
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
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity, Blessings, Silver Linings, Patience
Fain would I Raphael’s god-like art rehearse, where, from the mingled strength of shade and light, a new creation rises to my sight; such heavenly figures from his pencil flow, so warrn with life his blended colors glow.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Painting
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: One liners, Life
Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist ascribes to what he calls the philosopher’s stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire of them. If it cannot remove the disquietudes arising from a man’s mind, body, or fortune, it makes him easy under them.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Contentment
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
Topics: Animals
Man is the merriest, the most joyous of all the species of creation.—Above and below him all are serious.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Joy
A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured. It will lighten sickness, poverty, and affliction; convert ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Cheerfulness, Temper
There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: One liners, Unhappiness, Fame
Those who make religion to consist in the contempt of this world and its enjoyments, are under a very fatal and dangerous mistake. As life is the gift of heaven, it is religion to enjoy it. He, therefore, who can be happy in himself, and who contributes all in his power toward the happiness of others, answers most effectually the ends of his creation, is an honor to his nature, and a pattern to mankind.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Religion
Our friends don’t see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Mistakes, Faults
As to be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature, to be so to the utmost of our abilities is the glory of man.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Glory
When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Simplicity, Wisdom
What is life? It is not to stalk about, and draw fresh air, or gaze upon the sun; it is to be free.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Liberty
It is odd to consider the connection between despotism and barbarity, and how the making one person more than man makes the rest less.
—Joseph Addison
Is it not wonderful that the love of the animal parent should be so violent while it lasts and that it should last no longer than is necessary for the preservation of the young?
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Animals
Cleanliness may be recommended as a mark of politeness, as it produces affection, and as it bears analogy to purity of mind.—As it renders us agreeable to others, so it makes us easy to ourselves.—It is an excellent preservative of health; and several vices, destructive both to body and mind, are inconsistent with the habit of it.
—Joseph Addison
Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Age, Desires, Life
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Family, Father, Fathers
Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all our unhappiness.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Happiness, Unhappiness
Mere bashfulness without merit, is awkward; and merit without modesty, insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, and generally meets with as many patrons as beholders.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Merit, Confidence
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
Topics: Organization
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
Topics: Learning, Perseverance, Study
Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Tradition
Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Injury
A money-lender. He serves you in the present tense; he lends you in the conditional mood; keeps you in the subjunctive; and ruins you in the future!
—Joseph Addison
It must be a prospect pleasing to God to see his creatures forever drawing nearer to him by greater degrees of resemblance.
—Joseph Addison
A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of; it heightens all the virtues which it accompanies; like the shades in paintings, it raises and rounds every figure and makes the colors more beautiful, though not so glaring as they would be without.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Modesty, Humility
It is very wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards with no conversation but what is made up of a few game-phrases, and no other ideas but those of black or red spots ranged together in different figures. Would not a man laugh to hear any one of his species complaining that life is short?
—Joseph Addison
The truth of it is, learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as if finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Learning
Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Silence
Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Music
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