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 ADDISONI 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.
More Joseph Addison Quotes
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Were a man’s sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life.
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 -
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 -
A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.
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There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion–a form of knowledge without the power of it.
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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.
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Nothing that isn’t a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.
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No one is more cherished in this world than someone who lightens the burden of another. Thank you.
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On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.
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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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I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.
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.
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True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.
JOSEPH ADDISON