Quotes By Joseph Addison

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life... Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

The unassuming youth seeking instruction with humility gains good fortune.

Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

Those Marriages generally abound most with Love and Constancy, that are preceded by a long Courtship.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

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."

To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.