Joseph Addison quotes - page 2

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover. (Joseph Addison)
When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.
Joseph Addison
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
Joseph Addison
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 Addison
A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.
Joseph Addison
Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
Joseph Addison
Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.
Joseph Addison
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.
Joseph Addison
Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.
Joseph Addison
Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.
Joseph Addison
To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man. (Joseph Addison)
A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
Joseph Addison
There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
Joseph Addison
There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.
Joseph Addison
A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.
Joseph Addison
Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.
Joseph Addison
The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
Joseph Addison
A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.
Joseph Addison
Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!
Joseph Addison
There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
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)
I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.
Joseph Addison
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.
Joseph Addison
Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
Joseph Addison
Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.
Joseph Addison