Joseph Addison Quotes - Page 5

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• Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire for them.

  Joseph Addison

  Alchemist, Desire, Contentment

  Joseph Addison (1857). “Essays, Moral and Humorous. Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.162

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• Hunting is not a proper employment for a thinking man.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Thinking, Hunting

  Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

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• No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

  Joseph Addison

  Political, Politics, Oppression

  Joseph Addison (1794). “Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments: Tending to Amuse the Fancy, and Inculcate Morality”, p.286

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• There is noting truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure.

  Joseph Addison

  Pain, Real, Noble

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• On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.

  Joseph Addison

  Fate, Waiting, Judgment

  Joseph Addison (1854). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.4

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• When a woman comes to her class, she does not employ her time in making herself look more advantageously what she really is, but endeavours to be as much another creature as she possibly can. 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

  Maturity, Class, Long

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• Quick sensitivity is inseperable from a ready understanding.

  Joseph Addison

  Understanding, Sensitivity, Ready

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• Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.

  Joseph Addison

  Wit, Incongruity

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• The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.

  Joseph Addison

  Friendship, League, Vices

  Joseph Addison (1854). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.201

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• Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned.

  Joseph Addison

  Plato, Sacrifice, Men

  Sir Richard Steele, Joseph Addison (1829). “The Tatler and the Guardian: Complete in One Volume, with Notes, and a General Index”

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• Honour's a sacred tie, the law of kings,
  The noble mind's distinguishing perfection
  That aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her
  And imitates her actions where she is not:
  It is not to be sported with.

  Joseph Addison

  Kings, Law, Ties

  Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd (1811). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, a New Ed., with Notes”, p.364

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• In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

  Joseph Addison

  Friends, Men, Thinking

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.293

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• There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

  Joseph Addison

  Business, Decision Making

  'The Drummer' (1716) act 5, sc. 1

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• 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

  Water, Mind, Invisible

  The Spectator no. 476, 5 Sept. 1712

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• Honor's a fine imaginary notion, that draws in raw and unexperienced men to real mischiefs.

  Joseph Addison

  Real, Men, Honor

  Joseph Addison (1761). “Preface. Poems on several occasions. Rosamond. An essay on Virgil's Georgics. Cato. The drummer, or, The haunted house. Poemata. Dialogues upon the usefulness of ancient medals”, p.307

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• Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Respect, Passion

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1856). “The Spectator”, p.318

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• The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Degrees, Elegance

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• Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

  Joseph Addison

  Wisdom, Lying, Son

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.383

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• To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.

  Joseph Addison

  Single, Passion, Pleasing Others

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.100

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• Those who were skillful in Anatomy among the Ancients, concluded from the outward and inward Make of an Human Body, that it was the Work of a Being transcendently Wise and Powerful. As the World grew more enlightened in this Art, their Discoveries gave them fresh Opportunities of admiring the Conduct of Providence in the Formation of an Human Body.

  Joseph Addison

  God, Wise, Art

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1832). “The British Essayists: Containing the Spectator, with Notes and General Index, and the Tatler and Guardian, with Notes and General Index”

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• Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.

  Joseph Addison

  Work, Luxury, Way

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.65

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• Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.

  Joseph Addison

  Inspirational, Get Well, Yoga

  The Spectator Vol. V, No. 387 (1712)

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• When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault to love;
  The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,
  Sink in the soft captivity together.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Wise, Strong

  Joseph Addison (1860). “The works of Joseph Addison: including the whole contents of Bp. Hurd's edition, with letters and other pieces not found in any previous collection; and Macaulay's essay on his life and works”, p.427

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• To this end, nothing is to be more carefully consulted than plainness. In a lady's attire this is the single excellence; for to be what some people call fine, is the same vice, in that case, as to be florid is in writing or speaking.

  Joseph Addison

  Writing, People, Excellence

  Sir Richard Steele, Joseph Addison (1829). “The Tatler and the Guardian: Complete in One Volume, with Notes, and a General Index”, p.388

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• 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

  Country, Integrity, Patriotic

  Joseph Addison (1721). “The preface. Poems on several occasions. Rosamond. An opera. Notes on some of the foregoing stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses. An essay of Virgil's Georgics. Cato. A tragedy. Poemata. Dialogues upon the usefulness of ancient medals, especially in relation to the Latin and Greek poets. Three setts of medals illustrated by the ancient poets, in the foregoing dialogues”, p.278

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