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.
JOSEPH ADDISONIt is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.
More Joseph Addison Quotes
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When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I’m lost, in wonder, love and praise.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
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.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
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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.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
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.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Content thyself to be obscurely good.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in any quotation.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Nothing that isn’t a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
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All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter
JOSEPH ADDISON -
When a woman comes to her class, she does not employ her time in making herself look more advantageously what she really is, but endeavours to be as much another creature as she possibly can.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Nature is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite.
JOSEPH ADDISON