We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that’s the very next step to being dull.
JOSEPH ADDISONThere is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato’s description of the Supreme Being,–that truth is His body and light His shadow.
More Joseph Addison Quotes
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What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.
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 -
Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she has touched it with vermilion, planted in it a double row of ivory, made it the seat of smiles and blushes, lighted it up and enlivened it with the brightness of the eyes.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
It 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.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
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 ADDISON -
Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.
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 -
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 -
There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Man 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.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Women were formed to temper Mankind, and sooth them into Tenderness and Compassion; not to set an Edge upon their Minds, and blowup in them those Passions which are too apt to rise of their own Accord.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.
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 -
Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
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 -
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
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.
JOSEPH ADDISON -
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
JOSEPH ADDISON