Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
“A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day,” l. 27 (1694)
Quotations by:
Addison, Joseph
A little nonsense now and then
Is relished by the wisest men.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
“Sir Roger on the Bench”
If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
(Attributed)
Disputed. First attributed to "Addison" in the early 20th Century, in a paper by A. L. Evans, "Unity in Diversity," read before the Massachusetts Osteopathic Society (17 Mar 1906), and by Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908). But this may have been a reference to another man of the same last name who was credited with publishing Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments (1794).
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
(Attributed)
Broadly attributed to Addison, but possibly a 19th Century creation. The earliest found appearance is in 1854, and the earliest attribution to Addison in in 1862.
PORTIUS: ‘Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 1, sc. 2, l. 43ff (1713)
(Source)
This passage was widely known to America's Founders; John Adams paraphrases it in a letter to his wife Abigail (1776-02-18), and George Washington in letters to Nicholas Cooke (1775-10-29) and, most famously, Benedict Arnold (1775-12-05).
SEMPRONIUS: Oh! think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods,
Oh! ’tis a dreadful interval of time,
Filled up with horror all, and big with death!
Destruction hangs on every word we speak,
On every thought, till the concluding stroke
Determines all, and closes our design.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 1, sc. 3, l. 50ff (1713)
(Source)
JUBA: Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,
Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
SYPHAX: Young men soon give and soon forget affronts;
Old age is slow in both.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 2, sc. 5, l. 136ff (1713)
(Source)
CATO: How beautiful is death, when earn’d by virtue!
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 4, sc. 4, l. 79ff (1713)
(Source)
On being presented with the corpse of his son. This line is thought to have inspired Nathan Hale.
CATO: Content thyself to be obscurely good.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 4, sc. 4, l. 139ff (1713)
(Source)
CATO: The soul, secur’d in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 5, sc. 1, l. 124ff (1713)
(Source)
LUCIUS: Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man!
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 5, sc. 4, l. 26 (1713)
(Source)
LUCIUS: From hence, let fierce contending nations know,
What dire effects from civil discord flow.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Cato, Act 5, sc. 5, l. 106ff (1713)
(Source)
TINSEL: We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that’s the very next step to being dull.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Drummer, Act 4, sc. 6 (1716)
(Source)
Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Spectator (8 Oct 1712)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1709-03-18), The Tatler, No. 147
As exercise becomes tedious and painful when we make use of it only as the means of health, so reading is apt to grow uneasy and burdensome, when we apply ourselves to it only for our improvement in virtue. For this reason, the virtue which we gather from a fable, or an allegory, is like the health we get by hunting; as we are engaged in an agreeable pursuit that draws us on with pleasure, and makes us insensible of the fatigues that accompany it.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1709-03-18), The Tatler, No. 147
(Source)
A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1710-07-01), The Tatler, No. 192
(Source)
The Fear of Death often proves Mortal, and sets People on Methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-24), The Spectator, No. 25
(Source)
When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; 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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26
(Source)
I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26
(Source)
Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-03-30), “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator, No. 26
(Source)
In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow ,
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-05-18), The Spectator, No. 68
(Source)
Addison's translation of Martial's Epigram 12.47.
The truth of it is, there is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-05-24), The Spectator, No. 73
(Source)
The essay in focuses in particular on women who are idolized by coteries of men around them.
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.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-06-18), The Spectator, No. 94
(Source)
There is not so variable a thing in Nature as a lady’s head-dress.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-06-22), The Spectator, No. 98
(Source)
“Censure,” says a late ingenious author, “is the tax a man pays for being eminent.” It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping it, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-06-26), The Spectator, No. 101
(Source)
The quotation is from Jonathan Swift.
If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve. In a word, the man in a high post is never regarded with an indifferent eye, but always considered as a friend or an enemy.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-06-26), The Spectator, No. 101
(Source)
Persons in great stations have seldom their true characters drawn till several years after their deaths. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done to them.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-06-26), The Spectator, No. 101
(Source)
Every one that has been long dead has a due proportion of praise allotted him, in which, whilst he lived, his friends were too profuse, and his enemies too sparing.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-06-26), The Spectator, No. 101
(Source)
When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? my Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather (to speak my Thoughts freely) I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-07-14), The Spectator, No. 117
(Source)
My friend Sir Roger heard them both upon a round trot; and after having paused some time, told them with an air of a man who would not give his judgment rashly, that “much might be said on both sides.”
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-07-20), The Spectator, No. 122
(Source)
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behaviour is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-07-20), The Spectator, No. 122
(Source)
On "Sir Roger" de Coverley.
A cloudy day, or a little sunshine, have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most real blessings or misfortunes.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-09-05), The Spectator, No. 162
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-09-10), The Spectator, No. 166
(Source)
Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light, takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice, and makes even folly and impertinence supportable.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-09-13), The Spectator, No. 169
(Source)
Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief, and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-09-13), The Spectator, No. 169
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-09-27), The Spectator, No. 177
(Source)
The epitaph was on a tomb in St. George's Church at Doncaster, Yorkshire, and read:How now, who is heare?
I Robin of Doncastere,
And Margaret, my feare [wife]:
That I spent, that I had,
That I gave, that I have,
That I left, that I lost
A. D. 1579.
Quoth Robertus Byrks, who in this World did reign Three score years and seven, & yet lived not one.
(There are variation of spelling in various records of this epitaph, e.g., 1, 2, 3)
And that this is the Case very often, we may observe from the Behaviour of some of the most zealous for Orthodoxy, who have often great Friendships and Intimacies with vicious immoral Men, provided they do but agree with them in the same Scheme of Belief.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-10-02), The Spectator, No. 185
(Source)
There is nothing in which Men more deceive themselves than in what the World calls Zeal. There are so many Passions which hide themselves under it, and so many Mischiefs arising from it, that some have gone so far as to say it would have been for the Benefit of Mankind if it had never been reckoned in the Catalogue of Virtues. It is certain, where it is once Laudable and Prudential, it is an hundred times Criminal and Erroneous; nor can it be otherwise, if we consider that it operates with equal Violence in all Religions, however opposite they may be to one another, and in all the Subdivisions of each Religion in particular.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-10-02), The Spectator, No. 185
(Source)
We are told by some of the Jewish Rabbins, that the first Murder was occasioned by a religious Controversy; and if we had the whole History of Zeal from the Days of Cain to our own Times, we should see it filled with so many Scenes of Slaughter and Bloodshed, as would make a wise Man very careful how he suffers himself to be actuated by such a Principle, when it only regards Matters of Opinion and Speculation.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-10-02), The Spectator, No. 185
(Source)
A Man is glad to gain Numbers on his Side, as they serve to strengthen him in his private Opinions. Every Proselyte is like a new Argument for the Establishment of his Faith. It makes him believe that his Principles carry Conviction with them, and are the more likely to be true, when he finds they are conformable to the Reason of others, as well as to his own. And that this Temper of Mind deludes a Man very often into an Opinion of his Zeal, may appear from the common Behaviour of the Atheist, who maintains and spreads his Opinions with as much Heat as those who believe they do it only out of Passion for God’s Glory.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-10-02), The Spectator, No. 185
(Source)
I love to see a Man zealous in a good Matter, and especially when his Zeal shews it self for advancing Morality, and promoting the Happiness of Mankind: But when I find the Instruments he works with are Racks and Gibbets, Gallies and Dungeons; when he imprisons Mens Persons, confiscates their Estates, ruins their Families, and burns the Body to save the Soul, I cannot stick to pronounce of such a one, that (whatever he may think of his Faith and Religion) his Faith is vain, and his Religion unprofitable.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-10-02), The Spectator, No. 185
(Source)
The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them; or as the Italian proverb runs, “The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger.”
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-10-09), The Spectator, No. 191
(Source)
I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shews none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-06), The Spectator, No. 215
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-17), The Spectator, No. 225
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-17), The Spectator, No. 225
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-17), The Spectator, No. 225
(Source)
Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-17), The Spectator, No. 225
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-12-08), The Spectator, No. 243
(Source)
We should esteem virtue though in a foe, and abhor vice though in a friend.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-12-08), The Spectator, No. 243
(Source)
Temperance and abstinence, faith and devotion, are in themselves perhaps as laudable as any other virtues; but those which make a man popular and beloved are justice, charity, munificence, and, in short, all the good qualities which render us beneficial to each other.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-12-08), The Spectator, No. 243
(Source)
Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-12-22), The Spectator, No. 255
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-12-24), The Spectator, No. 256
(Source)
Even the greatest actions of a celebrated person labour under this disadvantage, that, however surprising and extraordinary they may be, they are no more than what are expected from him; but, on the contrary, if they fall any thing below the opinion that is conceived of him, though they might raise the reputation of another, they are diminution to his.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-12-24), The Spectator, No. 256
(Source)
“I have often thought,” says Sir Roger, “it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of winter. It is the most dead uncomfortable time of the year, when the poor people would suffer very much from their poverty and cold, if they had not good cheer, warm fires, and Christmas gambols to support them. I love to rejoice their poor hearts at this season, and to see the whole village merry in my great hall.”
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-01-08), The Spectator, No. 269
(Source)
Quoting Roger de Coverley. While the more frequent shorter excerpt (as in the image) conjures up enjoyment of the winter season, the broader quote demonstrates a noblesse oblige regarding the poor in winter.
Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-02-06), The Spectator, No. 306
(Source)
Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-05-17), The Spectator, No. 381
(Source)
I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as an habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depressions of melancholy. On the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents us from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-05-17), The Spectator, No. 381
(Source)
Cheerfulness is, in the first place, the best promoter of health. Repinings, and secret murmurs of heart, give imperceptible strokes to those delicate fibres of which the vital parts are composed, and wear out the machine insensibly; not to mention those violent ferments which they stir up in the blood, and those irregular disturbed motions which they raise in the animal spirits.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-05-24), The Spectator, No. 387
(Source)
Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-08-02), The Spectator, No. 447
(Source)
Certain it is, that there is no kind of affection so pure and angelic as that of a father to a daughter. He beholds her, both wise and without regard to her sex. In love to our wives there is desire, to our sons there is ambition; but in that to our daughters, there is something which there are no words to describe.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-08-05), The Spectator, No. 449
(Source)
Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood. I who hear a thousand coffee-house debates every day, am very sensible of this want of method in the thoughts of my honest countrymen. There is not one dispute in ten which is managed in those schools of politics, where, after the first three sentences, the question is not entirely lost. Our disputants put me in mind of the scuttle-fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-09-05), The Spectator, No. 476
(Source)
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-09-06), The Spectator, No. 477
(Source)
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-09-06), The Spectator, No. 477
(Source)
Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-10-09), The Spectator, No. 505
(Source)
There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice. We look upon the man who gives it us as offering an affront to our understanding, and treating us like children or idiots. We consider the instruction as an implicit censure, and the zeal which any one shows for our good on such an occasion as a piece of presumption or impertinence.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-10-17), The Spectator, No. 512
(Source)
The truth is, the person who pretends to advise, does, in that particular, exercise a superiority over us, and can have no other reason for it, but that, in comparing us with himself, he thinks us defective either in our conduct or our understanding. For these reasons, there is nothing so difficult as the art of making advice agreeable; and indeed all the writers, both ancient and modern, have distinguished themselves among one another, according to the perfection at which they have arrived in this art.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1712-10-17), The Spectator, No. 512
(Source)
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-07-04), The Guardian, No. 99
(Source)
Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another. It finishes one half of the human Soul. It makes Being pleasant to us, fills the mind with entertaining views, and administers to it a perpetual series of gratifications. It gives ease to solitude and gracefulness to retirement. It fills a publick station with suitable abilities, and adds a lustre to those who are in possession of them.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-07-18), The Guardian, No. 111
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-08-15), The Guardian, No. 135
(Source)
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 (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-08-15), The Guardian, No. 135
(Source)
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands, says an old writer. Gifts and alms are the expressions, not the essence of this virtue. A man may bestow great sums on the poor and indigent without being charitable, and may be charitable when he is not able to bestow anything. Charity is therefore a habit of good will, or benevolence in the soul, which disposes us to the love, assistance, and relief of mankind, especially of those who stand in need of it.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1713-09-21), The Guardian, No. 166
(Source)
Upon the whole, a contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1714-07-30), The Spectator, No. 574
(Source)
I have lived in one Reign, when the Prince, instead of invigorating the Laws of our Country, or giving them their proper Course, assumed a Power of dispensing with them: And in another, when the Sovereign was flattered by a Set of Men into a Persuasion, that the Regal Authority was unlimited and uncircumscribed. In either of these Cases, good Laws are at best but a dead Letter; and by shewing the People how happy they ought to be, only serve to aggravate the Sense of their Oppressions.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1715-12-26), The Freeholder, No. 2
(Source)
There is no greater Sign of a general Decay of Virtue in a Nation, than a Want of Zeal in its Inhabitants for the Good of their Countrey.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1716-01-06), The Freeholder, No. 5
(Source)
It may not therefore be unseasonable to recommend to this present Generation the Practice of that Virtue, for which their Ancestors were particularly famous, and which is called The Love of one’s Country. This Love to our Country, as a moral Virtue, is a fixed Disposition of Mind to promote the Safety; Welfare, and Reputation of the Community in which we are born, and of the Constitution under which we are protected.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1716-01-06), The Freeholder, No. 5
(Source)
An Army of Trumpeters would give as great a Strength to a Cause, as this Confederacy of Tongue-Warriours; who like those military Musicians, content themselves with animating their Friends to Battel, and run out of the Engagement upon the first Onset.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1716-03-26), The Freeholder, No. 28
(Source)
Regarding those supporting the Jacobite risings of the late 17th and early 18th Centuries.
A good Cause doth not want any Bitterness to support it, as a bad one cannot subsist without it. It is indeed observable, that an Author is scurrilous in proportion as he is dull; and seems rather to be in a Passion, because he cannot find out what to say for his own Opinion, than because he has discovered any pernicious Absurdities in that of his Antagonists.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1716-06-29), The Freeholder, No. 55
(Source)
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.