Famous Quotes

Quotes by Joseph Addison

• A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.
• A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.
• A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
• A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
• 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.
• 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.
• Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
• Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it courage which arises from a sense of duty acts in a uniform manner.
• 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.
• I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.
• If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.
• If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
• Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.
• It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.
• Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
• 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.
• Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
• Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.
• No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
• Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
• Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.
• Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.
• Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.
• The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.
• The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.
• The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.
• The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
• The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.
• There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
• There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
• There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.
• Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
• To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.
• To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.
• True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.
• What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.