English essayist, poet & playwright (1672-1719)
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/a/includes/quoter.php on line 35
The Guardian, Jul. 4, 1713
Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow,
And Scipio's ghost walks unavenged amongst us!
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Blessings may appear under the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let him have patience, and he will see them in their proper figures.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 25, 1713
Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Aug. 1, 1713
Among great geniuses those few draw the admiration of all the world upon them, and stand up as the prodigies of mankind, who, by the mere strength of natural parts, and without any assistance of art or learning, have produced works that were the delight of their own times and the wonder of posterity. There appears something nobly wild and extravagant in these great natural geniuses, that is infinitely more beautiful than all turn and polishing of what the French call a bel esprit, by which they would express a genius refined by conversation, reflection, and the reading of the most polite authors. The greatest genius which runs through the arts and sciences takes a kind of tincture from them and falls unavoidably into imitation.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"Genius", Essays and Tales
The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Freeholder, Jan. 13, 1716
If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, July 24, 1711
Disease generally brings that equality which death completes.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Saturday Magazine, November 11, 1837
Were all the vexations of life put together, we should find that a great part of them proceed from those calumnies and reproaches we spread abroad concerning one another.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, September 15, 1714
A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Aug. 15, 1713
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!
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator
Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Chill'd with tears, kill'd with fears, endless torments dwell about thee: yet who would live, and live without thee!
JOSEPH ADDISON
Rosamond
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles at the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
One of the best springs of generous and worthy actions, is having generous and worthy thoughts of ourselves: whoever has a mean opinion of the dignity of his nature will act in no higher a rank than he has allotted himself in his own estimation.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, October 31, 1711
I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 18, 1713
When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Freeholder, May 14, 1716
True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, August 15, 1712
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.
JOSEPH ADDISON
attributed, Many Thoughts of Many Minds