A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.
JOSEPH ADDISONMan is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
More Joseph Addison Quotes
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Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
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 -
I 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.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion–a form of knowledge without the power of it.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Our 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.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him than from those evils which had really befallen him.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend.
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 -
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 -
It is ridiculous for any man to criticize on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.
JOSEPH ADDISON







