Joseph Addison: Trending quotes

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Joseph Addison: 452 quotes40 likes

“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.”

No. 94 (18 June 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.”

No. 224.
The Tatler (1711–1714)

“Gifts and alms are the expressions, not the essence, of this virtue.”

No. 166.
The Guardian (1713)

“Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.”

Act IV, sc. vi.
The Drummer (1716)

“If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.”

No. 494 (26 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,
Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

“It must be so — Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
O falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

“When love once pleas admission to our hearts,
(In spite of all the virtue we can boast),
The woman that deliberates is lost.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
Variant: "When love once pleads admission to our hearts..."

Act IV, scene i. The last line has often been misreported as "He who hesitates is lost", a sentiment inspired by it but not penned by Addison. See Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 3.

“When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition.”

No. 115.
The Guardian (1713)

“Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.”

The Freeholder, no. 4.

“If the following day he chance to find
A new repast, or an untasted spring,
Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

“There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.”

No. 512 (17 October 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.”

No. 166.
The Guardian (1713)

“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?”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

“Content thyself to be obscurely good.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honor is a private station.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

“Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.”

No. 111.
The Guardian (1713)

“Curse on his virtues! they've undone his country.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

“A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.”

No. 243 (8 December 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.”

No. 162 (5 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The Lord my pasture shall prepare,
And feed me with a shepherd's care;
His presence shall my wants supply,
And guard me with a watchful eye.”

Spectator, No. 444.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)