Top 400 Joseph Addison Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.”

— Joseph Addison

302. “Though a man cannot abstain from being weak, he may from being vicious.”

— Joseph Addison

303. “True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.”

— Joseph Addison

304. “Life is not long enough for a coquette to play all her tricks in.”

— Joseph Addison

305. “A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.”

— Joseph Addison

306. “Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all our unhappiness.”

— Joseph Addison

307. “Great Pompey’s shade complains that we are slow, And Scipio’s ghost walks unaveng’d amongst us!”

— Joseph Addison

308. “Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet.”

— Joseph Addison

309. “A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.”

— Joseph Addison

310. “The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.”

— Joseph Addison

311. “As addictions go, reading is among the cleanest, easiest to feed, happiest.”

— Joseph Addison

312. “The English Writers of Tragedy are possessed with a Notion, that when they represent a virtuous or innocent Person in Distress, they ought not to leave him till they have delivered him out of his Troubles, or made him triumph over his Enemies.”

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

316. “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

317. “Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion – a form of knowledge without the power of it.”

— Joseph Addison

318. “I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what be calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute.”

— Joseph Addison

319. “Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.”

— Joseph Addison

320. “The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid their imperfections.”

— Joseph Addison

321. “If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve.”

— Joseph Addison

322. “We make provisions for this life as if it were never to have an end, and for the other life as though it were never to have a beginning.”

— Joseph Addison

323. “We have in England a particular bashfulness in every thing that regards religion.”

— Joseph Addison

324. “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

325. “For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.”

— Joseph Addison

326. “The first race of mankind used to dispute, as our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of wild logic, uncultivated by rule of art.”

— Joseph Addison

327. “Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities.”

— Joseph Addison

328. “Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.”

— Joseph Addison

329. “In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.”

— Joseph Addison

330. “We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them.”

— Joseph Addison

331. “All of heaven we have below.”

— Joseph Addison

332. “What can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being?”

— Joseph Addison

333. “No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially and expressing his meaning.”

— Joseph Addison

334. “Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news. If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.”

— Joseph Addison

335. “Our Grub-street biographers watch for the death of a great man like so many undertakers on purpose to make a penny of him.”

— Joseph Addison

336. “Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.”

— Joseph Addison

337. “It happened very providentially, to the honor of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height.”

— Joseph Addison

338. “Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places in a voluminous writer.”

— Joseph Addison

339. “That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out.”

— Joseph Addison

340. “There is not in earth a spectacle more worthy than a great man superior to his sufferings.”

— Joseph Addison

341. “Conspiracies no sooner should be formed Than executed.”

— Joseph Addison

342. “It is certain that there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated.”

— Joseph Addison

343. “Who rant by note, and through the gamut rage; in songs and airs express their martial fire; combat in trills, and in a fugue expire.”

— Joseph Addison

344. “Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.”

— Joseph Addison

345. “Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs.”

— Joseph Addison

346. “The statue lies hid in a block of marble; and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish.”

— Joseph Addison

347. “Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.”

— Joseph Addison

348. “It is ridiculous for any man to criticize on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances.”

— Joseph Addison

349. “I have sent for you that you may see how a Christian may die.”

— Joseph Addison

350. “Hunting is not a proper employment for a thinking man.”

— Joseph Addison