Joseph Addison Quotes

I would... earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.

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

The ways of heaven are dark and intricate;
Puzzled in mazes, and perplext with errors.

Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.

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!

Lucius There fled the greatest soul that ever warmed 100 A Roman breast. O Cato! O my friend! Thy will shall be religiously observed. But let us bear this awful corpse to Caesar, And lay it in his sight, that it may stand A fence betwixt us and the victor’s wrath; 105 Cato, though dead, shall still protect his friends. From hence, let fierce contending nations know What dire effects from civil discord flow. ’Tis this that shakes our country with alarms, And gives up Rome a prey to Roman arms, 110 Produces fraud, and cruelty, and strife, And robs the guilty world of Cato’s life. [Exeunt omnes.]

I Have often thought if the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool. There are infinite reveries, numberless extravagances, and a perpetual train of vanities which pass through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words.

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

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover

"We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do: we are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would no end of them."- On the Right Use of Time

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

But there is nothing that makes its way more directly to the Soul than Beauty, which immediately diffuses a secret satisfaction and complacency through the imagination, and gives a finishing to any thing that is Great or Uncommon.

'Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul: I think the Romans call it Stoicism.

Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.

A good Cause doth not want any Bitterness to support it, as a bad one cannot subsist without it. It is indeed observable, that an Author is scurrilous in proportion as he is dull; and seems rather to be in a Passion, because he cannot find out what to say for his own Opinion, than because he has discovered any pernicious Absurdities in that of his Antagonists.