Top 400 Joseph Addison Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The sense of honour is of so fine and delicate a nature, that it is only to be met with in minds which are naturally noble, or in such as have been cultivated by good examples, or a refined education.”

— Joseph Addison

102. “I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.”

— Joseph Addison

103. “Music religious heat inspires, It wakes the soul, and lifts it high, And wings it with sublime desires, And fits it to bespeak the Deity.”

— Joseph Addison

104. “The woman that deliberates is lost.”

— Joseph Addison

105. “I think I may define taste to be that faculty of the soul which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike.”

— Joseph Addison

106. “Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion.”

— Joseph Addison

107. “Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.”

— Joseph Addison

108. “If I can in any way contribute to the Diversion or Improvement of the Country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret Satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.”

— Joseph Addison

109. “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

110. “The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.”

— Joseph Addison

111. “Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.”

— Joseph Addison

112. “Round-heads and Wooden-shoes are standing jokes.”

— Joseph Addison

113. “The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.”

— Joseph Addison

114. “In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow, Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, nor without thee.”

— Joseph Addison

115. “There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.”

— Joseph Addison

116. “Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.”

— Joseph Addison

117. “The head has the most beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station, in a human figure.”

— Joseph Addison

118. “A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.”

— Joseph Addison

119. “An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.”

— Joseph Addison

120. “From hence, let fierce contending nations know, what dire effects from civil discord flow.”

— Joseph Addison

121. “The pride of woman, natural to her, never sleeps until modesty is gone.”

— Joseph Addison

122. “Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses.”

— Joseph Addison

123. “One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.”

— Joseph Addison

124. “Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.”

— Joseph Addison

125. “The talent of turning men into ridicule, and exposing to laughter those one converses with, is the qualification of little ungenerous tempers.”

— Joseph Addison

126. “My voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?”

— Joseph Addison

127. “Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.”

— Joseph Addison

128. “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

129. “Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.”

— Joseph Addison

130. “Love is a second life...”

— Joseph Addison

131. “They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.”

— Joseph Addison

132. “There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.”

— Joseph Addison

133. “Unbounded courage and compassion join’d, Tempering each other in the victor’s mind, Alternately proclaim him good and great, And make the hero and the man complete.”

— Joseph Addison

134. “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

135. “I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.”

— Joseph Addison

136. “The time never lies heavy upon him; it is impossible for him to be alone.”

— Joseph Addison

137. “There is nothing touches our imagination so much as a beautiful woman in a plain dress.”

— Joseph Addison

138. “A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.”

— Joseph Addison

139. “If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use.”

— Joseph Addison

140. “The Infusion of a China plant sweetened with the pith of an Indian Cane.”

— Joseph Addison

141. “A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.”

— Joseph Addison

142. “Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves.”

— Joseph Addison

143. “The most exquisite words and finest strokes of an author are those which very often appear the most doubtful and exceptionable to a man who wants a relish for polite learning; and they are those which a sour undistinguishing critic generally attacks with the greatest violence.”

— Joseph Addison

144. “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

145. “The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.”

— Joseph Addison

146. “Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind.”

— Joseph Addison

147. “The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment; if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy hereafter.”

— Joseph Addison

148. “We cannot be guilty of a greater act of uncharitableness, than to interpret the afflictions which befall our neighbors as punishments and judgments.”

— Joseph Addison

149. “Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.”

— Joseph Addison

150. “Nothing that isn’t a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.”

— Joseph Addison