Joseph Addison: Trending quotes

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Joseph Addison: 452 quotes40 likes

“Unbounded courage and compassion join'd,
Tempering each other in the victor's mind,
Alternately proclaim him good and great,
And make the hero and the man complete.”

Joseph Addison The Campaign

Source: The Campaign (1704), Line 219.

“The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which a good thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupt.”

No. 224.
The Tatler (1711–1714)

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

Samuel Johnson in The Rambler, no. 148 (17 August 1751).
Misattributed

“Our disputants put me in mind of the skuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible.”

No. 476 (5 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The sense of honour is of so fine and delicate a nature, that it is only to be met with in minds which are naturally noble, or in such as have been cultivated by good examples, or a refined education.”

No. 161.
The Guardian (1713)

“With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.”

This is attributed to Addison in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) with a citation of "Economy and Benevolence" in Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments (1794) but that was a publication of a contemporary "Mr. Addison" in several volumes, and not the poet. Vol. III of that publication (in 1796), on page 205, does contain these lines, but as part of an anonymous ancecdote.
Misattributed

“There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch.”

Act V, sc. 1.
The Drummer (1716)

“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.”

No. 124 (23 July 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait,
And from your judgment must expect my fate.”

A Poem to His Majesty (1695), l. 21.

“When hosts of foes with foes engage,
And round th' anointed hero rage,
The cleaving fauchion I misguide,
And turn the feather'd shaft aside.”

Second Angel, in Rosamond (c. 1707), Act III, sc. i.

“I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.”

No. 10 (11 March 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“O ye powers that search
The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts,
If I have done amiss, impute it not!
The best may err, but you are good.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act IV, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

“Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood.”

No. 476 (5 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief, and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.”

No. 169 (13 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Jesters do often prove prophets.”

Not found in Addison's works, and "Jesters do oft prove prophets" is actually William Shakespeare, in King Lear, Act V, sc. iii.
Misattributed

“Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.”

No. 115 (12 July 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind.”

No. 99.
The Guardian (1713)

“There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.”

The Freeholder, no. 5.

“What means this heaviness that hangs upon me?
This lethargy that creeps through all my senses?
Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care,
Sinks down to rest.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

“Rais'd of themselves, their genuine charms they boast,
And those who paint them truest praise them most.”

Joseph Addison The Campaign

last lines.
The Campaign (1704)