Joseph Addison Quotes

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

Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another. Joseph Addison

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. Joseph Addison

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. Joseph Addison

Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health, and is as friendly to the mind as to the body. Joseph Addison

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue. Joseph Addison

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without. Joseph Addison

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

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below. Joseph Addison

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

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

The post of honour is a private station. Joseph Addison

Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves. Joseph Addison

Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life. Joseph Addison

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world. Joseph Addison

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express. Joseph Addison

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature. Joseph Addison

Nothing that isn’t a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency. Joseph Addison

It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age. Joseph Addison

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt. Joseph Addison

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. Joseph Addison

Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view. Joseph Addison

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.’ Joseph Addison

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. Joseph Addison

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

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations. Joseph Addison