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.
JOSEPH ADDISONOur delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.
More Joseph Addison Quotes
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There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
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.
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 -
Whether this happens because they stay so long and attend their work so diligently that they forget the faces and persons, which they first sat down with, or whatever it is, they seldom rise from the toilet the same woman they appeared when they began to dress
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world; and if in the present life his happiness arises from the subduing of his desires, it will arise in the next from the gratification of them.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections
JOSEPH ADDISON -
If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
JOSEPH ADDISON