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Joseph Addison Quotes - Page 22

All Quotes Affection Age Ambition Appearance Art Atheism Beauty Bravery Character Children Community Compassion Contentment Country Courage Criticism Critics Death Design Desire Destiny Earth Education Enthusiasm Eternity Evil Exercise Fame Fate Flattery Friends Friendship Funny Genius Giving Glory God Gold Gratitude Greatness Grief Happiness Health Heart Heaven Honesty Honor Hope Human Nature Humanity Humility Husband Imagination Imperfection Innocence Inspirational Inspiring Judgment Justice Kindness Knowledge Laughter Liberty Life Life And Death Literature Losing Love Lying Mankind Marriage Modesty Morality Mountain Music Nature Opportunity Pain Passion Perfection Philosophy Plato Praise Prejudice Pride Prosperity Quality Reading Religion Running Safety Satire Science Serenity Silence Sorrow Soul Success Suffering Sunshine Talent Time Tragedy Understanding Violence Virtue War Weakness Wine Wisdom Wit Work Writing

Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul, Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee, Bright'ning each other! thou art all divine!

Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul, Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee, Bright'ning each other! thou art all divine!

Art, Women, Soul Beauty

"Cato, A Tragedy". Play by Joseph Addison, 1713.

Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.

Husband, Lying, Emergencies

Joseph Addison (1828). “A Selection [- Second Selection] from the Paper of Addison: In the Spectator and Guardian, for the Use of Young Persons”, p.93

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint, will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. - Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and cringes over the most obstinate and inflexible. - Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens; confounded their statesmen; struck their orators dumb; and at length argued them out of all their liberties.

Wisdom, Philosophy, Men

The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.

Morning, Fate, Clouds

Joseph Addison (1825). “Cato: A Tragedy, in Five Acts”, p.1

A source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold Him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of His perfections, we see everything that we can imagine as great glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by His goodness and surrounded by an immensity of love and mercy.

God, Discovery, Perfection

Joseph Addison (1872). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.359

Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.

Discovery, Talent, Reason

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steel (1840). “Selections from the Spectator: Embracing the Most Interesting Papers by Addison, Steel, and Others”, p.52

Our friends don't see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them.

Faults

O ye powers that search The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, If I have done amiss, impute it not! The best may err, but you are good.

Heart, Men, Done

Joseph Addison (1837). “The Tatler. The Guardian. The Freeholder. The Whig-examiner. The lover. Dialogues upon the usefulness of ancient medals. Remarks on several parts of Italy, etc. The present state of the war. The late trial and conviction of Count Tariff. The evidences of the Christian religion. Essay on Virgil's Georgics. Poems on several occasions. Translations from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Notes on some of the foregoing stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Poemata. Rosamond. Cato. The drummer”, p.499

Half the misery of human life might be extinguished if men would alleviate the general curse they lie under by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence, and humanity.

Kindness, Lying, Men

Joseph Addison (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Addison (Illustrated)”, p.2953, Delphi Classics

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

Criminals, Modesty, False Modesty

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.406

I believe that everyone, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the composition of another.

Dream, Mistake, Believe

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1819). “The Spectator”, p.59

Guard thy heart on this weak side, where most our nature fails.

Heart, Weakness, Sides

Joseph Addison (1825). “Cato: A Tragedy, in Five Acts”, p.1

Amidst the soft variety I'm lost.

Lost, Variety

Joseph Addison, Henry George Bohn, Richard Hurd (1856). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison: Poems on several occasions. Poemata. Dialogues upon the usefulness of ancient medals, especially in relation to the Latin and Greek poets. Remarks on several parts of Italy, in the years 1701, 1702, 1703”, p.35

There is nobody so weak of invention that cannot make some little stories to villify his enemy.

Enemy, Stories, Littles

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1822). “The Spectator: with notes and illustrations. In six volumes”, p.192

A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.

Distance, Circles, Sound

Joseph Addison (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Addison (Illustrated)”, p.323, Delphi Classics

I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition.

Sex, Light, Evil

Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd, Henry George Bohn (1873). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.263

One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. 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. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.

Lying, Pride, Son

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steel (1858). “The Spectator”, p.169

In that disputable point of persecuting men for conscience sake, I see such dreadful consequences rising, I would be as fully convinced of the truth of it, as a mathematical demonstration, before I would venture to act upon it or make it a part of my religion.

Men, Would Be, Rising

Joseph Addison (1812). “The evidences of the Christian religion: with additional discourses on the following subjects, viz: Of God, and his attributes. The power and wisdom of God in the creation. The providence of God. The worship of God. Advantages of revelation above natural reason. Excellency of the Christian institution. Dignity of the Scripture language. Against atheism and infidelity. Against the modern free-thinkers. Immortality of the soul, and a future state. Death and judgment”, p.169

In England we see people lulled sleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiasm.

Sleep, People, Would Be

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1832). “The Spectator: with notes and general index, from the London stereotype edition ...”

We see no where the pernicious effects of luxury on a republic more than in that of the ancient Romans, who immediately found itself poor as soon as this vice got footing among them, though they were possessed of all the riches in the world.

Luxury, Vices, Ancient

"The Works of Joseph Addison".

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!

Thinking, Filled Up, Plot

Joseph Addison (1854). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.179

True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.

Giving, Mind, Religion

The Obedience of Children to their Parents is the Basis of all Government, and set forth as the measure of that Obedience which weowe to those whom Providence hath placed over us.

Children, Government, Childhood

Joseph Addison (1721). “The Spectator, no. 90-505”, p.159

The passion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair sex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who desire to be admired for that which only deserves admiration.

Sex, Passion, Desire

Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.236

How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?

Fall, Men, Perfection

Joseph Addison (1842). “The Works of Joseph Addison”, p.171

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