Quotes from Joseph Addison

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us.

What means this heaviness that hangs upon me? This lethargy that creeps through all my senses? Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care, Sinks down to rest.

It is an unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions, at some laudable end.

In short, if you banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.

For how few ambitious men are there, who have got as much fame as they desired, and whose thirst after it has not been as eager in the very height of their reputation, as it was before they became known and eminent among men?

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.

The sun, which is as the great soul of the universe, and produces all the necessaries of life, has a particular influence in cheering the mind of man, and making the heart glad.

To be perfectly just is an attribute in the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.

I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.

Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow, And Scipio's ghost walks unavenged amongst us!

A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence; but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.

I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Chill'd with tears, kill'd with fears, endless torments dwell about thee: yet who would live, and live without thee!

The ill are damped with pain and anguish at the sight of all that is laudable, lovely, or happy.

A money-lender--he serves you in the present tense; he lends you in the conditional mood; keeps you in the conjunctive; and ruins you in the future.

If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends.

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

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.

And even the greatest actions of a celebrated person labour under this disadvantage, that however surprising and extraordinary they may be, they are no more than what are expected from him; but on the contrary, if they fall any thing below the opinion that is conceived of him, though they might raise the reputation of another, they are a diminution to his.

If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud through all her works) he must delight in virtue.

Oh! think what anxious moments pass between the birth of plots, and their last fatal periods. Oh! 'Tis a dreadful interval of time, filled up with horror all, and big with death!

Disease generally brings that equality which death completes.

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

Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship.