Quotes from 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.

I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in any quotation.

Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding places in a voluminous writer.

Physick, for the most part, is nothing else but the Substitute of Exercise or Temperance.

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.

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

These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.

There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance.

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts.

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 from without.

A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life; where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue Who would not be that youth What pity is it That we can die but once to serve our country

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.

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

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

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.

Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.

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