Quotes from Joseph Addison

Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that's a very next step to being dull.

Irresolution on the schemes of life I which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all unhappiness.

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.

From hence, let fierce contending nations know, what dire effects from civil discord flow.

My voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?

Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die, and lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.

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

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.

I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: 'What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.'

Those Marriages generally abound most with Love and Constancy, that are preceded by a long Courtship.

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

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

How is it possible for those who are men of honor in their persons, thus to become notorious liars in their party

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

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas.

A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.

If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.

He dances like an Angel.

A person terrified with the imagination of spectres, is more reasonable than one who thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless.

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.