Top 400 Joseph Addison Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

— Joseph Addison

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2. “No one is more cherished in this world than someone who lightens the burden of another. Thank you.”

— Joseph Addison

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3. “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

— Joseph Addison

4. “Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.”

— Joseph Addison

Featured in: Cheer Quotes, Enjoy Life Quotes, Wellness Wednesday Quotes, Health Quotes

5. “Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity.”

— Joseph Addison

6. “Cleanliness may be defined to be the emblem of purity of mind.”

— Joseph Addison

7. “Nature is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite.”

— Joseph Addison

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8. “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

9. “There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.”

— Joseph Addison

10. “Colors speak all languages.”

— Joseph Addison

11. “Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.”

— Joseph Addison

12. “The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger.”

— Joseph Addison

13. “Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses. It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments.”

— Joseph Addison

14. “Whilst I yet live, let me not live in vain.”

— Joseph Addison

15. “Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.”

— Joseph Addison

16. “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

17. “Temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor.”

— Joseph Addison

18. “I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways findtheir Account in the Speculation of the Day.”

— Joseph Addison

19. “A great large book is a great evil.”

— Joseph Addison

20. “Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn.”

— Joseph Addison

21. “Let freedom never perish in your hands.”

— Joseph Addison

22. “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

23. “Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.”

— Joseph Addison

24. “I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.”

— Joseph Addison

25. “Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.”

— Joseph Addison

26. “There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance.”

— Joseph Addison

27. “Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings.”

— Joseph Addison

28. “Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly.”

— Joseph Addison

29. “When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I’m lost, in wonder, love and praise.”

— Joseph Addison

30. “The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship.”

— Joseph Addison

31. “An evil intention perverts the best actions, and makes them sins.”

— Joseph Addison

32. “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

33. “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

34. “Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.”

— Joseph Addison

35. “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

36. “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

37. “I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.”

— Joseph Addison

38. “A friend exaggerates a man’s virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.”

— Joseph Addison

39. “Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.”

— Joseph Addison

40. “Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.”

— Joseph Addison

41. “Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.”

— Joseph Addison

42. “My death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me.”

— Joseph Addison

43. “Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul, Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee, Bright’ning each other! thou art all divine!”

— Joseph Addison

44. “A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.”

— Joseph Addison

45. “The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang even at the moment of parting; yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half of its bitterness when uttered in accents that breathe love to the last sigh.”

— Joseph Addison

46. “An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.”

— Joseph Addison

47. “Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied; like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.”

— Joseph Addison

48. “Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.”

— Joseph Addison

49. “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

50. “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