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
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. They are but trifles, to be sure, but, scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
—Joseph Addison
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: Happiness, Blessings
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
Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Faith
It is ridiculous for any man to criticize the works of another who has not distinguished himself by his own performance.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Criticism
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
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
Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Riches, Pride
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
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
Topics: Foresight
Quick sensitiveness is inseparable from a ready understanding.
—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: Humility
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: One liners, Charity
There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.
—Joseph Addison
Physick, for the most part, is nothing else but the Substitute of Exercise or Temperance.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Health
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
Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Attitude
Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Silence
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
Topics: Books, Reading, Literature
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
Topics: Friendship, Endurance, Perseverance, Resolve, Success
Honor’s a fine imaginary notion, that draws in raw and unexperienced men to real mischiefs.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Honor
It is ridiculous for any man to criticize the works of another if he has not distinguished himself by his own performances.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Criticism
A soul exasperated by its ills falls out with everything, with its friends and also with itself.
—Joseph Addison
There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance.
—Joseph Addison
As vivacity is the gift of women, gravity is that of men.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Men, Men and Women, Women, Men & Women
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: Confidence
Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Ignorance, Prejudice
Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Virtue, Virtues
Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.
—Joseph Addison
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
In private conversation between intimate friends the wisest men very often talk like the weakest; for, indeed, the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Thinking, Conversation
The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.
—Joseph Addison
An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Power
The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Authors & Writing
The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods, to save their lives, which infallibly destroy them. This is a reflection made upon observing that there are more thousands killed in a flight, than in a battle; and may be applied to those multitudes of imaginary sick persons that break their constitutions by physic, and throw themselves into the arms of death, by endeavoring to escape it.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Nature, Death
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
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: Patience, Difficulties, Blessings, Silver Linings, Adversity
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: Perseverance, Learning
Though laughter is looked upon by philosophers as the property of reason, the excess of it has always been considered the mark of folly.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Laughter
A contemplation of God’s works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility—these only, denominate men great and glorious.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Greatness
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