What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
JOSEPH ADDISONI consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes.
More Joseph Addison Quotes
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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 -
A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
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Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man’s own making.
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Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.
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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.
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The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
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Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly.
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That aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her And imitates her actions where she is not: It is not to be sported with.
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.
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Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.
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To this end, nothing is to be more carefully consulted than plainness. In a lady’s attire this is the single excellence; for to be what some people call fine, is the same vice, in that case, as to be florid is in writing or speaking.
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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