Joseph Addison Quotes
There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride.
Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.
Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.
Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.
We cannot be guilty of a greater act of uncharitableness, than to interpret the afflictions which befall our neighbors as punishments and judgments.
Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.
He only is a great man who can neglect the applause of the multitude and enjoy himself independent of its favor.
The moral perfections of the Deity, the more attentively, we consider, the more perfectly still shall we know them.
Flying would give such occasions for intrigues as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them.
The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.
Honor's a fine imaginary notion, that draws in raw and unexperienced men to real mischiefs.
The person who has a firm trust in the Supreme Being is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness.
There is noting truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure.
E'en the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom, and trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.
There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.
Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves.
When a man has been guilty of any vice or folly, the best atonement he can make for it is to warn others not to fall into the like.
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.
It is wonderful to see persons of sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards.
Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant.
I consider time as an in immense ocean, in which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up.
Our Grub-street biographers watch for the death of a great man like so many undertakers on purpose to make a penny of him.
A fine coat is but a livery when the person who wears it discovers no higher sense than that of a footman.
There is no passion that is not finely expressed in those parts of the inspired writings which are proper for divine songs and anthems.
No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially and expressing his meaning.
When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault to love; The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise, Sink in the soft captivity together.
There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.
An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.
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.
The great number of the Jews furnishes us with a sufficient cloud of witnesses that attest the truth of the Bible.
The world is so full of ill-nature that I have lampoons sent me by people who cannot spell, and satires composed by those who scarce know how to write.
A religious hope does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings but makes her rejoice in them.
There is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of all ages, as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general name of punning.
