Joseph Addison quotes

“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

“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

“I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.”

— Joseph Addison

“Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.”

— Joseph Addison

“Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.”

— Joseph Addison

“That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?”

— Joseph Addison

“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

“Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.”

— Joseph Addison

“The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.”

— Joseph Addison

“Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.”

— Joseph Addison

“Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.”

— Joseph Addison

“One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.”

— Joseph Addison

“To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.”

— Joseph Addison

“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

“Jesters do often prove prophets.”

— Joseph Addison

“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

“There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.”

— Joseph Addison

“There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.”

— Joseph Addison

“There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.”

— Joseph Addison

“Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.”

— Joseph Addison

“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

“Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.”

— Joseph Addison

“Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.”

— Joseph Addison

“Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.”

— 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

“Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.”

— Joseph Addison

“Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.”

— Joseph Addison

“Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.”

— Joseph Addison

“Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.”

— Joseph Addison

“The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.”

— Joseph Addison