Joseph Addison
English essayist and co-founder of The Spectator, 1672-1719
27 quotes.
Quotes by Joseph Addison
- A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us without.
- A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
- A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.
- An industrious and virtuous education of children is a better inheritance for them than a great estate.
- Books are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to those that are yet unborn.
- Charity is a virtue of the heart and not of the hands.
- Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health, and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
- Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes the man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts in a uniform manner.
- Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joy, and dividing our grief.
- How 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.
- If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
- Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all our unhappiness.
- Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.
- Man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world.
- Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into commonsense.
- Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.
- Moral courage arises from a sense of duty, and from a fear of offending Him who made us. It always acts in a uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right reason.
- One of the most important, but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is, to be its own master. A pond may lie quiet in a plain; but a lake wants mountains to compass and hold it in.
- 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.
- Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation.
- Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
- The most skilful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.
- There is no real life but cheerful life.
- There is not in earth a spectacle more worthy than a great man superior to his sufferings.
- We are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.
- What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.
- What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.