Top 400 Joseph Addison Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “I have but nine-pence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds.”

— Joseph Addison

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

155. “Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colors.”

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

157. “Adulterers, in the first stages of the church, were excommunicated forever, and unqualified all their lives for bearing a part in Christian assemblies, notwithstanding they might seek it with tears, and all the appearances of the most unfeigned repentance.”

— Joseph Addison

158. “A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.”

— Joseph Addison

159. “The person who has a firm trust in the Supreme Being is powerful in his power, wise by his wisdom, happy by his happiness.”

— Joseph Addison

160. “A jealous man is very quick in his application: he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrick on another.”

— Joseph Addison

161. “There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former.”

— Joseph Addison

162. “An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience.”

— Joseph Addison

163. “We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.”

— Joseph Addison

164. “But silence never shows itself to so great an advantage, as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.”

— Joseph Addison

165. “Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!”

— Joseph Addison

166. “Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.”

— Joseph Addison

167. “There are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of Nature, find work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.”

— Joseph Addison

168. “There is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man’s reputation. Lampoons and satires that are written with wit and spirit are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.”

— Joseph Addison

169. “The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas.”

— Joseph Addison

170. “There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato’s description of the Supreme Being, – that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.”

— Joseph Addison

171. “Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.”

— Joseph Addison

172. “A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and should make a due discrimination between those that are and those that are not the proper objects of it.”

— Joseph Addison

173. “True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.”

— Joseph Addison

174. “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

175. “There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.”

— Joseph Addison

176. “One would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started into discourse; but, instead of this we find that conversation is never so much straightened and confined, as in numerous assemblies.”

— Joseph Addison

177. “There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, “That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults.” Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.”

— Joseph Addison

178. “Half the misery of human life might be extinguished if men would alleviate the general curse they lie under by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence, and humanity.”

— Joseph Addison

179. “Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit.”

— Joseph Addison

180. “By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.”

— Joseph Addison

181. “The very first discovery of beauty strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties.”

— Joseph Addison

182. “It must be so, Plato, thou reason’st well!”

— Joseph Addison

183. “A good disposition is more valuable than gold, for the latter is the gift of fortune, but the former is the dower of nature.”

— Joseph Addison

184. “The pleasantest part of a man’s life is generally that which passes in courtship, provided his passion be sincere, and the party beloved kind with discretion. Love, desire, hope, all the pleasing emotions of the soul, rise in the pursuit.”

— Joseph Addison

185. “Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.”

— Joseph Addison

186. “Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.”

— Joseph Addison

187. “Talk not of love: thou never knew’st its force.”

— Joseph Addison

188. “Amidst the soft variety I’m lost.”

— Joseph Addison

189. “Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the contempt of which is great.”

— Joseph Addison

190. “The disease of jealously is so malignant that is converts all it takes into its own nourishment.”

— Joseph Addison

191. “There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride.”

— Joseph Addison

192. “An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman.”

— Joseph Addison

193. “There is no defense against reproach, but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness.”

— Joseph Addison

194. “See in what peace a Christian can die.”

— Joseph Addison

195. “Virtue which shuns, the day.”

— Joseph Addison

196. “The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.”

— Joseph Addison

197. “I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: ‘What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.’”

— Joseph Addison

198. “A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections.”

— Joseph Addison

199. “A contemplation of God’s works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility only, denominate men great and glorious.”

— Joseph Addison

200. “There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.”

— Joseph Addison