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Joseph Addison Quotes - Page 4

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

There is noting truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure.

There is noting truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure.

Pain, Real, Noble

Content thyself to be obscurely good.

Thyself

'Cato' (1713) act 4, sc. 1, l. 319

Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.

Work, Luxury, Way

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.65

It is impossible for authors to discover beauties in one another's works; they have eyes only for spots and blemishes.

Eye, Impossible, Rivalry

Joseph Addison (1761). “The Works of the Late Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq;”, p.63

The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.

Men, Degrees, Elegance

There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

Business, Decision Making

'The Drummer' (1716) act 5, sc. 1

It is ridiculous for any man to criticize on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances.

Men, Criticism, Ridiculous

Joseph Addison (1868). “The Works of Joseph Addison: Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition, with Letters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.238

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.

Life, Happiness, Men

Joseph Addison (1793). “A Collection of Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments”, p.336

The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

Knowledge, Men, Literature

Joseph Addison (1794). “Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments: Tending to Amuse the Fancy, and Inculcate Morality”, p.230

Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion--a form of knowledge without the power of it.

Hypocrisy, Pedants, Form

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

Inspirational, Funny, Nature

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1837). “The Tatler: With Notes and a General Index ; Complete in One Volume”, p.191

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

Political, Politics, Oppression

Joseph Addison (1794). “Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments: Tending to Amuse the Fancy, and Inculcate Morality”, p.286

There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being,--that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.

Truth, Plato, Errors

Joseph Addison (1857). “Essays, Moral and Humorous. Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.144

Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire for them.

Alchemist, Desire, Contentment

Joseph Addison (1857). “Essays, Moral and Humorous. Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.162

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

Friendship, League, Vices

Joseph Addison (1854). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.201

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Friendship, Best Friend, Thinking

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.293

As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.

Reading, Addiction

Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible.

Water, Mind, Invisible

The Spectator no. 476, 5 Sept. 1712

Those who were skillful in Anatomy among the Ancients, concluded from the outward and inward Make of an Human Body, that it was the Work of a Being transcendently Wise and Powerful. As the World grew more enlightened in this Art, their Discoveries gave them fresh Opportunities of admiring the Conduct of Providence in the Formation of an Human Body.

God, Wise, Art

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1832). “The British Essayists: Containing the Spectator, with Notes and General Index, and the Tatler and Guardian, with Notes and General Index”

Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.

Moving, Pride, Littles

Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.298

The man who will live above his present circumstances, is in great danger of soon living beneath them; or as the Italian proverb says, "The man that lives by hope, will die by despair.

Italian, Men, Despair

The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing.

Writing, Lapses, Genius

Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.454

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.

Writing, Ambitious, Literature

Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd (1811). “The Works: In Six Volumes”, p.84

Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned.

Plato, Sacrifice, Men

Sir Richard Steele, Joseph Addison (1829). “The Tatler and the Guardian: Complete in One Volume, with Notes, and a General Index”

True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.

Animal, Compassion, Philanthropy

Joseph Addison (1795). “Interesting anecdotes, memoirs, allegories, essays, and poetical fragments; tending to amuse the fancy, and inculcate morality”

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