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Joseph Addison Quotes
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Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine. Wikipedia  

✵ 1. May 1672 – 17. June 1719
Joseph Addison photo
Joseph Addison: 226 quotes40 likes

Joseph Addison Quotes

“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.”

Joseph Addison

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

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

Joseph Addison

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.”

Joseph Addison

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.”

Joseph Addison

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

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

Joseph Addison

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.”

Joseph Addison

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

“O Dormer, how can I behold thy fate,
And not the wonders of thy youth relate;
How can I see the gay, the brave, the young,
Fall in the cloud of war, and lie unsung!
In joys of conquest he resigns his breath,
And, filled with England's glory, smiles in death.”

Joseph Addison The Campaign

Source: The Campaign (1704), Line 309.

“Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die,
And lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.”

Joseph Addison The Campaign

Source: The Campaign (1704), Line 152.

“Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage, as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.”

Joseph Addison

No. 133.
The Tatler (1711–1714)

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

Joseph Addison

No. 99.
The Guardian (1713)

“Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.”

Joseph Addison

Moncure Daniel Conway, in The Sacred Anthology (Oriental) : A Book of Ethnical Scriptures 5th edition (1877), p. 386; this statement appears beneath an Arabian proverb, and Upton Sinclair later attributed it to the Qur'an, in The Cry for Justice : An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest (1915), p. 475.
Misattributed

“I would fain ask one of these bigotted Infidels, supposing all the great Points of Atheism … were laid together and formed into a kind of Creed, according to the Opinions of the most celebrated Atheists; I say, supposing such a Creed as this were formed, and imposed upon any one People in the World, whether it would not require an infinitely greater Measure of Faith, than any Set of Articles which they so violently oppose.”

Joseph Addison

No. 185 http://archive.twoaspirinsandacomedy.com/spectator/spectator.php?line=185 (2 October 1711). <br class="br">Often misquoted as &quot;To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.&quot; <br class="br">The Spectator (1711–1714)

“These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.”

Joseph Addison

No. 335 (25 March 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

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

Joseph Addison

No. 475 (4 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the Middle of the Winter”

Joseph Addison

No. 269 (8 January 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?”

Joseph Addison

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

“Some virtues are only seen in affliction and some in prosperity.”

Joseph Addison

No. 257 (25 December 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

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

Joseph Addison

No. 98 (22 June 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

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

Joseph Addison

These words, sometimes attributed to Addison, are not found in his works, but in The Spectator, no. 54, he translates the following words of Socrates, as quoted in Plato's Apology: "When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."
Misattributed

“The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.”

Joseph Addison

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

“To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.”

Joseph Addison

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer, in his "The Meaning of Life", collected in The Meaning of Life, and Other Essays (1990).
Misattributed

“An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.”

Joseph Addison

No. 562 (2 July 1714).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Why wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer
Imaginary ills, and fancy'd tortures?”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

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

Joseph Addison

No. 73 (24 May 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.”

Joseph Addison

No. 291 (2 February 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“I'm weary of conjectures,—this must end 'em.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

“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 choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.”

Joseph Addison

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

“When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.”

Joseph Addison

Thoughts in Westminster Abbey (1711).

“Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.”

Joseph Addison

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

“The honors of this world, what are they
But puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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

“The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger: the first is a perpetual call upon them to propogate their kind; the latter to preserve themselves.”

Joseph Addison

No. 120 (18 July 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.”

Joseph Addison

No. 477 (6 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The cast of mind which is natural to a discreet man, make him look forward into futurity, and consider what will be his condition millions of ages hence, as well as what it is at present. He knows that the misery or happiness which are reserved for him in another world, lose nothing of their reality by being placed at so great a distance from him. The objects do not appear little to him because they are remote. He considers that those pleasures and pains which lie hid in eternity, approach nearer to him every moment, and will be present with him in their full weight and measure, as much as those pains and pleasures which he feels at this very instant. For this reason he is careful to secure to himself that which is the proper happiness of his nature, and the ultimate design of his being. He carries his thoughts to the end of every action, and considers the most distant as well as the most immediate effects of it. He supersedes every little prospect of gain and advantage which offers itself here, if he does not find it consistent with his views of an hereafter. In a word, his hopes are full of immortality, his schemes are large and glorious, and his conduct suitable to one who knows his true interest, and how to pursue it by proper methods.”

Joseph Addison

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

“At the same time that I think discretion the most useful talent a man can be master of, I look upon cunning to be the accomplishment of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Discretion points out the noblest ends to us, and pursues the most proper and laudable methods of attaining them: cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon: cunning is a kind of short-sightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance. Discretion the more it is discovered, gives a greater authority to the person who possesses it: cunning, when it is once detected, loses its force, and makes a man incapable of bringing about even those events which he might have done had he passed only for a plain man. Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life: cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interest and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understandings, cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.”

Joseph Addison

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

“Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.”

Joseph Addison

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

“The discreet man finds out the talents of those he converses with, and knows how to apply them to proper uses. Accordingly, if we look into particular communities and divisions of men, we may observe that it is the discreet man, not the witty, nor the learned, nor the brave, who guides the conversation, and gives measures to the society.”

Joseph Addison

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

“There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion; it is this, indeed, which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.”

Joseph Addison

No. 225
The Tatler (1711–1714)

“I have somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much pleased me. I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this purpose; What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.”

Joseph Addison

No. 177 (22 September 1711)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“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.”

Joseph Addison

No. 166 (10 September 1711)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“That nothing is capable of being well set to Musick, that is not Nonsense.”

Joseph Addison

No. 18 (March 21, 1711)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us.”

Joseph Addison

No. 135
The Guardian (1713)

“When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.”

Joseph Addison

Thoughts in Westminster Abbey (1711)

“Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.”

Joseph Addison

No. 147
The Tatler (1711–1714)

“When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love and praise.”

Joseph Addison

No. 453 (9 August 1712)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The Fear of Death often proves Mortal, and sets People on Methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.”

Joseph Addison

No. 25 (29 March 1711)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!”

Joseph Addison book Cato

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