Joseph Addison – 37 Quotes

37 Quotes by Joseph Addison

There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

– Joseph Addison

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.

– Joseph Addison

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

– Joseph Addison

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

– Joseph Addison

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

– Joseph Addison

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

– Joseph Addison

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

– Joseph Addison

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

– Joseph Addison

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

– Joseph Addison

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

– Joseph Addison

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

– Joseph Addison

Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.

– Joseph Addison

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

– Joseph Addison

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

– Joseph Addison

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

– Joseph Addison

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

– Joseph Addison

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

– 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

A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.

– 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.

– Joseph Addison

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

– 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

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

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

– 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

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

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

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

– Joseph Addison

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

– Joseph Addison

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

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

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

– Joseph Addison

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

– Joseph Addison

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

– Joseph Addison

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

– Joseph Addison

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

– Joseph Addison

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

– Joseph Addison