1672-1719, British Essayist, Poet, Statesman
''We are always doing,'' says he, ''something for posterity, but I would see posterity do something for us.''
Joseph Addison – [Posterity]
'Tis not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.
Joseph Addison – [Merit]
A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.
Joseph Addison – [Weather]
A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.
Joseph Addison – [Contentment]
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 – [Conscience]
A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.
Joseph Addison – [Bigotry]
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants…
Joseph Addison – [Fulfillment]
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart, and his next to escape the censures of the world.
Joseph Addison – [Censure]
A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
Joseph Addison – [Marriage]
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 – [Admiration]
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 – [Ostentation]
Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.
Joseph Addison – [Animals]
Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
Joseph Addison – [Argument]
As vivacity is the gift of women, gravity is that of men.
Joseph Addison – [Men and Women]
Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places in a voluminous writer.
Joseph Addison – [Dullness]
Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.
Joseph Addison – [Honor]
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 – [Books and Reading]
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 – [Family]
Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
Joseph Addison – [Cheerfulness]
Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts ;in a uniform manner.
Joseph Addison – [Courage]