Joseph Addison quotes

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius. (Joseph Addison)
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
Joseph Addison
Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.
Joseph Addison
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
Joseph Addison
I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.
Joseph Addison
Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.
Joseph Addison
We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.
Joseph Addison
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
Joseph Addison
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
Joseph Addison
Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body.
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)
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
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Joseph Addison
If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
Joseph Addison
Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.
Joseph Addison
I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: "What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me."
Joseph Addison
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
Joseph Addison
Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
Joseph Addison
There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
Joseph Addison
A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.
Joseph Addison
Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity. (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
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
Joseph Addison
Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
Joseph Addison
The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.
Joseph Addison