Top 400 Joseph Addison Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Conspiracies no sooner should be formed Than executed.”

— Joseph Addison

352. “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

353. “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

354. “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

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

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

357. “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

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

— Joseph Addison

359. “Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.”

— Joseph Addison

360. “How is it possible for those who are men of honor in their persons, thus to become notorious liars in their party.”

— Joseph Addison

361. “Supposing all the great points of atheism were formed into a kind of creed, I would fain ask whether it would not require an infinite greater measure of faith than any set of articles which they so violently oppose.”

— Joseph Addison

362. “There is nobody so weak of invention that cannot make some little stories to villify his enemy.”

— Joseph Addison

363. “We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that’s the very next step to being dull.”

— Joseph Addison

364. “We are apt to rely upon future prospects, and become really expensive while we are only rich in possibility. We live up to our expectations, not to our possessions, and make a figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are.”

— Joseph Addison

365. “Hope calculates its scenes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; and grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin and dishonor.”

— Joseph Addison

366. “If our zeal were true and genuine we should be much more angry with a sinner than a heretic.”

— Joseph Addison

367. “Why, a spirit is such a little, little thing, that I have heard man, who was a great scholar, say that he’ll dance ye a hornpipe upon the point of a needle.”

— Joseph Addison

368. “Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.”

— Joseph Addison

369. “There is a sort of economy in Providence that one shall excel where another is defective, in order to make men more useful to each other, and mix them in society.”

— Joseph Addison

370. “Encourage innocent amusement.”

— Joseph Addison

371. “Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either by the prejudice of education or by a deference to the judgment of those who perhaps in their own hearts disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude.”

— Joseph Addison

372. “There is noting truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure.”

— Joseph Addison

373. “The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.”

— Joseph Addison

374. “Tis not my talent to conceal my thoughts, Or carry smiles and sunshine in my face, When discontent sits heavy at my heart.”

— Joseph Addison

375. “The ungrown glories of his beamy hair.”

— Joseph Addison

376. “The religious man fears, the man of honor scorns, to do an ill action.”

— Joseph Addison

377. “Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.”

— Joseph Addison

378. “There are greater depths and obscurities, greater intricacies and perplexities, in an elaborate and well-written piece of nonsense, than in the most abstruse and profound tract of school divinity.”

— Joseph Addison

379. “Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art.”

— Joseph Addison

380. “Look what a little vain dust we are!”

— Joseph Addison

381. “A common civility to an impertinent fellow, often draws upon one a great many unforeseen troubles; and if one doth not take particular care, will be interpreted by him as an overture of friendship and intimacy.”

— Joseph Addison

382. “The schoolboy counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married.”

— Joseph Addison

383. “The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.”

— Joseph Addison

384. “Blesses his stars and thinks it luxury.”

— Joseph Addison

385. “Oh! think what anxious moments pass between The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods, Oh! ’tis a dreadful interval of time, Filled up with horror all, and big with death!”

— Joseph Addison

386. “Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.”

— Joseph Addison

387. “Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.”

— Joseph Addison

388. “When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.”

— Joseph Addison

389. “The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.”

— Joseph Addison

390. “There is a great amity between designing and art.”

— Joseph Addison

391. “The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only; good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented.”

— Joseph Addison

392. “It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.”

— Joseph Addison

393. “Flying would give such occasions for intrigues as people cannot meet with who have nothing but legs to carry them.”

— Joseph Addison

394. “It is folly to seek the approbation of any being besides the Supreme.”

— Joseph Addison

395. “Religion prescribes to every miserable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it shows him that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them.”

— Joseph Addison

396. “One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.”

— Joseph Addison

397. “Music raises in the mind of the hearer great conceptions: it strengthens and advances praise into rapture.”

— Joseph Addison

398. “Wine displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.”

— Joseph Addison

399. “It is of unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions at some laudable end.”

— Joseph Addison

400. “In England we see people lulled sleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiasm.”

— Joseph Addison