Joseph Addison quotes - page 4

Round-heads and wooden-shoes are standing jokes. (Joseph Addison)
Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.
Joseph Addison
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
Joseph Addison
The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.
Joseph Addison
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
Joseph Addison
When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
Joseph Addison
Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow, And Scipio's ghost walks unaveng'd amongst us.
Joseph Addison
Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
Joseph Addison
A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions that can possibly befall us.
Joseph Addison
A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts.
Joseph Addison
The Lord my pasture shall prepare, And feed me with a shepherd's care His presence shall my wants supply, And guard me with a watchful eye. (Joseph Addison)
'T is not in mortals to command success, But we 'll do more, Sempronius, we 'll deserve it.
Joseph Addison
I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.
Joseph Addison
The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim.
Joseph Addison
Our disputants put me in mind of the skuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible.
Joseph Addison
From hence, let fierce contending nations know What dire effects from civil discord flow.
Joseph Addison
What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.
Joseph Addison
Should the whole frame of Nature round him break, In ruin and confusion hurled, He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, And stand secure amidst a falling world.
Joseph Addison
The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.
Joseph Addison
Thy steady temper, Portius, Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud, and Csar, In the calm lights of mild philosophy.
Joseph Addison
Admiration is a very short-lived passion that decays on growing familiar with its object unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries and kept alive by perpetual miracles rising up to its view. (Joseph Addison)
It must be so - Plato, thou reasonest well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, O falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.
Joseph Addison
Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always, therefore, represented as blind.
Joseph Addison
I have often thought, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the Middle of Winter.
Joseph Addison
The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life... Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.
Joseph Addison