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. This motivational Joseph Addison quotes will motivate you.
Best Joseph Addison Quotes
- Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.~ Joseph Addison
- 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
- No one is more cherished in this world than someone who lightens the burden of another. Thank you.~ Joseph Addison
- There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.~ Joseph Addison
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The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.~ Joseph Addison
- Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.~ Joseph Addison
- Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.~ Joseph Addison
- What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.~ Joseph Addison, Joseph Addison quotes on education
- Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses, and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.~ Joseph Addison
- A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.~ Joseph Addison
- The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment is a secret which but few discover.~ Joseph Addison
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Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.~ Joseph Addison
- They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.~ Joseph Addison
- When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.~ Joseph Addison
- There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion.~ Joseph Addison
- I Have often thought if the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool. There are infinite reveries, numberless extravagances, and a perpetual train of vanities which pass through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words.~ Joseph Addison
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A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants. ~ Joseph Addison
- A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.~ Joseph Addison
- Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.~ Joseph Addison
- Encourage innocent amusement.~ Joseph Addison
- A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.~ Joseph Addison
- The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship.~ Joseph Addison
- Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man’s own making.~ Joseph Addison
- One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.~ Joseph Addison
- There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance~ Joseph Addison
- Were a man’s sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him than from those evils which had really befallen him.~ Joseph Addison
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Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.~ Joseph Addison
- I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in any quotation.~ 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
- Women were formed to temper Mankind, and soothe them into Tenderness and Compassion; not to set an Edge upon their Minds, and blow up in them those Passions which are too apt to rise of their own Accord.~ Joseph Addison
- Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.~ Joseph Addison
- A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.~ Joseph Addison
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This not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.~ Joseph Addison
- The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas.~ Joseph Addison
- How is it possible for those who are men of honor in their persons, thus to become notorious liars in their party
An evil intention perverts the best actions and makes them sins.~ Joseph Addison - Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.
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Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. ~ Joseph Addison
- There is nothing which strengthens faith more than the observance of morality.~ Joseph Addison
- Jesters do often prove prophets.~ Joseph Addison
- If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.~ 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
- All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter~ Joseph Addison
- There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.~ Joseph Addison Quotes
- 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
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Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion. ~ 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 Quotes
- Supposing all the great points of atheism were formed into a kind of creed, I would fain ask whether it would not require an infinite greater measure of faith than any set of articles which they so violently opposed. ~ Joseph Addison
- Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart. ~ Joseph Addison
- “We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that’s the very next step to being dull.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to their mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the nations of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another and be united together by their common interest.” ~ Joseph Addison
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“On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, And from your judgment must expect my fate.”
- “Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “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
- “Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “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
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“I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “Every wife ought to answer for her man. If the husband be engaged in a seditious club, or drinks mysterious healths, or be frugal of his candles on a rejoicing night, let her look to him and keep him out of harm’s way; or the world will be apt to say, she has a mind to be a widow before her time. She ought, in such cases, to exert the authority of the curtain lecture; and if she finds him of a rebellious disposition, to tame him, as they do birds of prey, by dinning him in the ears all night long.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “The jealous man’s disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.” ~ Joseph Addison
- “The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.” ~ Joseph Addison