Top 400 Joseph Addison Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since they have the same improvable minds as the male part of their species.”

— Joseph Addison

252. “There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.”

— Joseph Addison

253. “The Obedience of Children to their Parents is the Basis of all Government, and set forth as the measure of that Obedience which weowe to those whom Providence hath placed over us.”

— Joseph Addison

254. “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

255. “How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?”

— Joseph Addison

256. “Guard thy heart on this weak side, where most our nature fails.”

— Joseph Addison

257. “Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.”

— Joseph Addison

258. “Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.”

— Joseph Addison

259. “There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion.”

— Joseph Addison

260. “Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart.”

— Joseph Addison

261. “Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire.”

— Joseph Addison

262. “One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.”

— Joseph Addison

263. “Whether zeal or moderation be the point we aim at, let us keep the fire out of the one, and the frost out of the other.”

— Joseph Addison

264. “Instability of temper ought to be checked when it disposes men to wander from one scheme to another: since such a fickleness cannot but be attended with fatal consequences.”

— Joseph Addison

265. “The English delight in Silence more than any other European Nation, if the Remarks which are made on us by Foreigners are true.”

— Joseph Addison

266. “My heart leaps at the trumpet’s voice.”

— Joseph Addison

267. “A money-lender – he serves you in the present tense; he lends you in the conditional mood; keeps you in the conjunctive; and ruins you in the future.”

— Joseph Addison

268. “Plutarch says very finely that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies.”

— Joseph Addison

269. “Nothing makes men sharper than want.”

— Joseph Addison

270. “It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belongto his Neighbour.”

— Joseph Addison

271. “The greatest parts, without discretion as observed by an elegant writer, may be fatal to their owner; as Polyphemus, deprived of his eyes, was only the more exposed on account of his enormous strength and stature.”

— Joseph Addison

272. “Jesters do often prove prophets.”

— Joseph Addison

273. “Novelty serves us for a kind of refreshment, and takes off from that satiety we are apt to complain of in our usual and ordinary entertainments.”

— Joseph Addison

274. “Content thyself to be obscurely good.”

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

276. “From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life; where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor.”

— Joseph Addison

277. “Must one rash word, the infirmity of age, throw down the merit of my better years?”

— Joseph Addison

278. “It must be a prospect pleasing to God Himself to see His creation forever beautifying in His eyes, and drawing nearer Him by greater degrees of resemblance.”

— Joseph Addison

279. “Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.”

— Joseph Addison

280. “A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.”

— Joseph Addison

281. “Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.”

— Joseph Addison

282. “In rising sighs and falling tears.”

— Joseph Addison

283. “Every passion gives a particular cast to the countenance, and is apt to discover itself in some feature or other. I have seen an eye curse for half an hour together, and an eyebrow call a man a scoundrel.”

— Joseph Addison

284. “Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate in.”

— Joseph Addison

285. “I believe that everyone, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the composition of another.”

— Joseph Addison

286. “Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves.”

— Joseph Addison

287. “A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.”

— Joseph Addison

288. “Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant, and, as some say, of the first that was ever written.”

— Joseph Addison

289. “E’en the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom, and trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.”

— Joseph Addison

290. “Women were formed to temper Mankind, and sooth them into Tenderness and Compassion; not to set an Edge upon their Minds, and blowup in them those Passions which are too apt to rise of their own Accord.”

— Joseph Addison

291. “We find that Good and Evil happen alike to all Men on this Side of the Grave; and as the principle Design of Tragedy is to raise Commiseration and Terror in the Minds of the Audience, we shall defeat this great End, if we always make Virtue and Innocence happy and successful.”

— Joseph Addison

292. “Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance.”

— Joseph Addison

293. “Even the greatest actions of a celebrated person labor under this disadvantage, that however surprising and extraordinary they may be, they are no more than what are expected from him.”

— Joseph Addison

294. “Is it not wonderful, that the love of the parent should be so violent while it lasts and that it should last no longer than is necessary for the preservation of the young?”

— Joseph Addison

295. “It is the duty of all who make philosophy the entertainment of their lives, to turn their thoughts to practical schemes for the good of society, and not pass away their time in fruitless searches, which tend rather to the ostentation of knowledge than the service of life.”

— Joseph Addison

296. “The great number of the Jews furnishes us with a sufficient cloud of witnesses that attest the truth of the Bible.”

— Joseph Addison

297. “Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds and glitters for a moment.”

— Joseph Addison

298. “For ever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine.”

— Joseph Addison

299. “Marriage enlarges the Scene of our Happiness and Miseries.”

— Joseph Addison

300. “But there is nothing that makes its way more directly to the Soul than Beauty, which immediately diffuses a secret satisfaction and complacency through the imagination, and gives a finishing to any thing that is Great or Uncommon.”

— Joseph Addison