It must be a prospect pleasing to God to see his creatures forever drawing nearer to him by greater degrees of resemblance.
—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
Topics: Hope
Physick, for the most part, is nothing else but the Substitute of Exercise or Temperance.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Health
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Honor
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
Topics: Reading, Books
The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Modesty
What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Patriotism
There is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Critics, Criticism, Defense
A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction an assent, an enraged eye makes beauty deformed. This little member gives life to every other part about us; and I believe the story of Argus implies no more than that the eye is in every part; that is to say, every other part would be mutilated were not its force represented more by the eye than even by itself.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Eyes
‘Tis not in mortals to command success, But we’ll do more, for we’ll deserve it.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Merit, Worth, Success
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Life, One liners
To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Atheism
God discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will thereafter entitle many to the reward of actions which they never had the opportunity of performing.
—Joseph Addison
Let freedom never perish in your hands.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Freedom
Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above or below him are serious.
—Joseph Addison
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
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
Topics: Slander, Insults
There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Business
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants and how much more unhappy he might be than he really is.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Blessings, Happiness
A man who has been brought up among books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indifferent companion, and what we call a pedant. But we should enlarge the title, and give it to every one that does not know how to think out of his profession and particular way of life.
—Joseph Addison
Half the misery of human life might be extinguished if men would alleviate the general curse they lie under by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence, and humanity.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Kindness
Every one that has been long dead has a due proportion of praise allotted him, in which, whilst he lived, his friends were too profuse and his enemies too sparing.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Praise
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
Topics: Business, Greatness
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
Topics: Education
The person who has a firm trust in the Supreme Being is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Faith, God, Belief, Divinity
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
Topics: Charity, Giving
One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Laughter
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself, seconded by the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Censorship, Applause, Honesty
Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Wine
An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to; the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.
—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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