Top 400 Joseph Addison Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

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

— Joseph Addison

203. “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

204. “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

205. “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

206. “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

207. “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

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

— Joseph Addison

209. “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

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210. “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

211. “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

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

— Joseph Addison

213. “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

214. “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

215. “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

216. “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

217. “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

218. “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

219. “Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.”

— Joseph Addison

220. “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

221. “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

222. “Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.”

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

227. “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

228. “It was a saying of an ancient philosopher, which I find some of our writers have ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, who perhaps might have taken occasion to repeat it, that a good face is a letter of recommendation.”

— Joseph Addison

229. “If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.”

— Joseph Addison

230. “It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.”

— Joseph Addison

231. “The Gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength, and throw our into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.”

— Joseph Addison

232. “The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing.”

— Joseph Addison

233. “All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter.”

— Joseph Addison

234. “There is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of all ages, as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general name of punning.”

— Joseph Addison

235. “Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.”

— Joseph Addison

236. “It is pleasant to see a notorious profligate seized with a concern for religion, and converting his spleen into zeal.”

— Joseph Addison

237. “Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable.”

— Joseph Addison

238. “Yet then from all my grief, O Lord, Thy mercy set me free, Whilst in the confidence of pray’r My soul took hold on thee.”

— Joseph Addison

239. “Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward; and merit without modesty, insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, and generally meets with as many patrons as beholders.”

— Joseph Addison

240. “It is impossible for authors to discover beauties in one another’s works; they have eyes only for spots and blemishes.”

— Joseph Addison

241. “If men, who in their hearts are friends to a government, forbear giving it their utmost assistance against its enemies, they put it in the power of a few desperate men to ruin the welfare of those who are much superior to them in strength, number, and interest.”

— Joseph Addison

242. “Let echo, too, perform her part, Prolonging every note with art; And in a low expiring strain, Play all the comfort o’er again.”

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

244. “A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors.”

— Joseph Addison

245. “Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.”

— Joseph Addison

246. “The moral virtues, without religion are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.”

— Joseph Addison

247. “When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition.”

— Joseph Addison

248. “I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in any quotation.”

— Joseph Addison

249. “Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.”

— Joseph Addison

250. “He only is a great man who can neglect the applause of the multitude and enjoy himself independent of its favor.”

— Joseph Addison