English essayist, poet & playwright (1672-1719)
Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.
JOSEPH ADDISON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Jul. 9, 1711
Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 4, 1713
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Sep. 21, 1713
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.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, No. 161
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Poem to His Majesty
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
The Spectator, Sep. 10, 1711
Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
Music religious heat inspires / It wakes the soul, and lifts it high / And wings it with sublime desires / And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Song for St. Cecilia's Day
'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Young men soon give and soon forget affronts; old age is slow in both.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
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.
JOSEPH ADDISON
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
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
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
The Spectator, Sep. 13, 1711
But further, a man whose extraordinary reputation thus lifts him up to the notice and Observation of mankind, draws a multitude of eyes upon him that will narrowly inspect every part of him.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 256
Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Aug. 1, 1713
A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence; but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Freeholder, Feb. 3, 1716
Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have here below.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
I do not propose to our British ladies, that they should turn Amazons in the service of their sovereign, nor so much as let their nails grow for the defence of their country. The men will take the work of the field off their hands, and show the world, that English valour cannot be matched when it is animated by English beauty.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Freeholder, Jan. 16, 1716