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
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
Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places in a voluminous writer.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Reading
A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Criticism
The man who will live above his present circumstances, is in great danger of soon living much beneath them; or as the Italian proverb says, “The man that lives by hope, will die by despair.”
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Economy
To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Solitude
I… recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Self-Discovery
Certain it is that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as the love of a father to a daughter. He beholds her both with and without regard to her sex.—In love to our wives, there is desire; to our sons, there is ambition; but in that to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Father, Love, Family
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
It very seldom happens that a man is slow enough in assuming the character of a husband, or a woman quick enough in condescending to that of a wife.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Wife
True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind; admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Religion
Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Health
Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.
—Joseph Addison
Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.
—Joseph Addison
Conspiracies no sooner should be formed than executed.
—Joseph Addison
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Friendship
Every man is ready to give in a long catalogue of those virtues and good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend; but very few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Virtue
The man of pleasure little knows the perfect joy he loses for the disappointing gratifications which he pursues.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Pleasure
Temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor.
—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
Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; and grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonor.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Hope
Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Friends, Friendship
Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Jealousy
It is of the utmost importance to season the passions of the young with devotion, which seldom dies in the mind that has received an early tincture of it. Though it may seem extinguished for a while by the cares of the world, the heats of youth, or the allurements of vice, it generally breaks out and discovers itself again as soon as discretion, consideration, age, or misfortunes have brought the man to himself. The fire may be covered and overlaid but cannot be entirely quenched and smothered.
—Joseph Addison
One may now know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good breeding. A polite country esquire shall make you as many bows in half an hour, as would serve a courtier for a week.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Manners
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: Temper, Cheerfulness
There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.
—Joseph Addison
Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Luxury
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 a frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Society
Honor’s a sacred tie,—the noble mind’s distinguishing perfection, that aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her, and imitates her actions, where she is not.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Honor
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
Topics: Friendship, Enjoyment
A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Prejudice
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: Desires, Age, Life
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
Quick sensitiveness is inseparable from a ready understanding.
—Joseph Addison
Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Lying, Lies, Deception/Lying
Women’s thoughts are ever turned apon appearing amiable to the other sex; they talk and move and smile with a design upon us; every feature of their faces, every part of their dress, is filled with snares and allurements. There would be no such animals as prudes or coquettes in the world were there not such an animal as man.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Woman
There is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Critics, Defense, Criticism
We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them.
—Joseph Addison
Topics: Luxury
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
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: Study, Perseverance, Learning
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