Best 528 quotes of Joseph Addison on MyQuotes

Joseph Addison

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    Joseph Addison

    A brother's sufferings claim a brother's pity.

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    Joseph Addison

    A cheerful temper, joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.

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    Joseph Addison

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

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    Joseph Addison

    A common civility to an impertinent fellow, often draws upon one a great many unforeseen troubles; and if one doth not take particular care, will be interpreted by him as an overture of friendship and intimacy.

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    Joseph Addison

    A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

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    Joseph Addison

    A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility only, denominate men great and glorious.

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    Joseph Addison

    A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world; and if in the present life his happiness arises from the subduing of his desires, it will arise in the next from the gratification of them.

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    Joseph Addison

    A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

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    Joseph Addison

    Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

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    Joseph Addison

    Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

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    Joseph Addison

    Adulterers, in the first stages of the church, were excommunicated forever, and unqualified all their lives for bearing a part in Christian assemblies, notwithstanding they might seek it with tears, and all the appearances of the most unfeigned repentance.

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    Joseph Addison

    Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.

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    Joseph Addison

    A fine coat is but a livery when the person who wears it discovers no higher sense than that of a footman.

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    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 from without.

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    Joseph Addison

    A good disposition is more valuable than gold, for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.

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    Joseph Addison

    A jealous man is very quick in his application: he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrick on another.

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    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.

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    Joseph Addison

    Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.

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    Joseph Addison

    All of heaven we have below.

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    Joseph Addison

    All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter

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    Joseph Addison

    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.

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    Joseph Addison

    A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.

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    Joseph Addison

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

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    Joseph Addison

    A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.

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    Joseph Addison

    A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public.

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    Joseph Addison

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

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    Joseph Addison

    A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

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    Joseph Addison

    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

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    Joseph Addison

    A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.

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    Joseph Addison

    A man whose extraordinary reputation thus lifts him up to the notice and observation of mankind, draws a multitude of eyes upon him, that will narrowly inspect every part of him.

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    Joseph Addison

    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.

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    Joseph Addison

    Amidst the soft variety I'm lost.

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    Joseph Addison

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

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    Joseph Addison

    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.

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    Joseph Addison

    Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

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    Joseph Addison

    Among the English authors, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch the weak, superstitious part of his readers' imagination, and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius.

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    Joseph Addison

    Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colors.

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    Joseph Addison

    Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.

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    Joseph Addison

    Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.

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    Joseph Addison

    An evil intention perverts the best actions, and makes them sins.

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    Joseph Addison

    An honest man, that is not quite sober, has nothing to fear.

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    Joseph Addison

    An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.

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    Joseph Addison

    An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman.

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    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.

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    Joseph Addison

    An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.

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    Joseph Addison

    An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience.

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    Joseph Addison

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

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    Joseph Addison

    Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.

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    Joseph Addison

    A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.

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    Joseph Addison

    A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.