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
Topics: Revolution
Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Tradition
We are growing serious, and let me tell you, that’s the next step to being dull.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Identity
The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader’s eye; without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Advertising
The humor of turning every misfortune into a judgment, proceeds from wrong notions of religion, which, in its own nature, produces good will toward men, and puts the mildest construction upon every accident that befalls them. In this case, therefore, it is not religion that sours a man’s temper, but it is his temper that sours his religion.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Misfortune
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
Topics: Laughter
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
There is nobody so weak of invention that he cannot make up some little stories to vilify his enemy.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Slander
The most skilful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Flattery
To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge,—carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Soul
A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Marriage, Weddings
Ideas in the mind are the transcript of the world; words are the transcript of ideas; and writing and printing are the transcript of words.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Ideas
Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce at the same time that they conceal it.
—Joseph Addison
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
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
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.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Education
A well regulated commerce is not like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors.
—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
Topics: Laughter
‘Tis not my talent to conceal my thoughts, or carry smiles and sunshine in my face, when discontent sits heavy at my heart.
—Joseph Addison
Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Wishes
If we consider the frequent reliefs we receive from laughter, and how often it breaks the gloom which is apt to depress the mind, one would take carp not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Laughter
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Friendship
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
Topics: Appetite
The virtue which we gather from a fable or an allegory, is like the health we get by hunting, as we are engaged in an agreeable pursuit that draws us on with pleasure, and makes us insensible of the fatigues that accompany it.
—Joseph Addison
The moral virtues, without religion, are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warns the soul with more than sensual pleasures.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Religion
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
Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Hypocrisy
Temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor.
—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
Topics: Humility, Vanity
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Samuel Johnson British Essayist
- A. C. Benson English Essayist
- Arthur Helps British Essayist, Historian
- William Hazlitt English Essayist
- Thomas de Quincey English Essayist, Critic
- John Dryden English Poet
- Miguel de Unamuno Spanish Philosopher, Writer
- William Wycherley English Dramatist
- G. K. Chesterton English Journalist
- Pamela Hansford Johnson British Novelist, Critic
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