Joseph Addison Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover

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

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.

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.

Should the whole frame of nature round him break, In ruin and confusion hurled, He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, And stand secure amidst a falling world.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.

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 proper figures.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, in the enjoyment of one's self, and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

If you wish success in life, make perseverance you bosom friend, experience your wise councellor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind.

Writing again, he stressed that the events of war are always uncertain. Then, paraphrasing a favorite line from the popular play Cato by Joseph Addison - a line that General Washington, too, would often call upon - Adams told her, "We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Quick sensitivity is inseperable from a ready understanding.

An empty desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

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.

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise.

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 tombs 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 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. 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

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.

What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

He who hesitates is lost.

True benevolence, or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathises with the distress of every creature capable of sensation

Senyum bagi manusia adalah ibarat cahaya matahari bagi bunga. Kelihatannya sepele, tetapi apabila disebarkan sepanjang hidup, manfaatnya tidak bisa dihitung.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds and glitters for a moment.

Tis not in mortals to command success; but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.” -Joseph Addison

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

The ways of heaven are dark and intricate; Puzzled in mazes, and perplext with errors.

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;

The gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength and throw out into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.

I am...I am constantly moving in the direction of higher evolutionary impulses, creativity, abstraction, and meaning.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

Oh! think what anxious moments pass between The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods.

Rahmat sering datang kepada kita dalam bentuk kesakitan, kehilangan dan kekecewaan. Tetapi kalau kita sabar, kita segera akan melihat bentuk aslinya.

Nothing is so much admired, and so little understood, as wit.

We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do: we are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would no end of them."- On the Right Use of Time

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body

There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride

Whoe’er is brave and virtuous, is a Roman.

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

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.

And, pleased th’ Almighty’s orders to perform, Rides in the whirl-wind, and directs the storm.

Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.

When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault to love; The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise, Sink in the soft captivity together.

The following brief points are like magic moccasins. They guarantee safe guidance through the forest of people. To walk safely, wear them! 1. The most persuasive power you have toward others is a mature self. 2. The mark of greatness is to be superior without feeling superior. 3. "The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang." (Joseph Addison) 4. The turning point in all your exterior relations comes when you start changing your inner self. 5. Strong people attract the weak. 6. Possessiveness and dependency are not states of love. 7. Your own level of being attracts the kind of people who enter your life. 8. "He is happy as well as great who needs neither to obey nor command in order to be something." (Goethe) 9. Your True Self cannot be afraid of anyone. 10. You break the cord of painful thought toward another person by snipping the connection within your own mind. 11. It is very painful to pretend to be someone. 12. Any sincere effort at bettering your human relations returns a reward. 13. Don't drain your energy by thinking negatively toward people who harm you. 14. You get along with others to the exact degree that you get along with yourself. 15. A real person stands out like a human being among statues.

... when I see kings lying by those who deposed them,... or 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.

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

Reading is to the mind what exerise is to the body.

Joseph," she whispered quietly. He groaned and reached an arm out to her, gripping her hip and pushing her flat on her back once again. Before she had time to make sense of it, he was on top of her, pushing up her shirt and exposing her flesh. "Addison," he groaned in desperate need. He couldn't take it, couldn't be this close to her without being with her. Hungrily, he devoured her mouth, eating every gasp and moan she made.

But there is nothing that makes its way more directly to the Soul than Beauty, which immediately diffuses a secret satisfaction and complacency through the imagination, and gives a finishing to any thing that is Great or Uncommon.

Then she is beautiful beyond the Race of Women; if you won't let her go on with a certain Artifice with her eyes, and the Skill of Beauty, she will arm her self with her real Charms, and strike you with Admiration instead of Desire.

TEN GREATEST ENGLISH POETS Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning. TEN GREATEST ENGLISH ESSAYISTS Bacon, Addison, Steele, Macaulay, Lamb, Jeffrey, De Quincey, Carlyle, Thackeray and Matthew Arnold.

In 1884, the American physician William Pancoast injected sperm from his “best-looking” student into an anesthetized woman—without her knowledge—whose husband had been deemed infertile. Nine months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby. Pancoast eventually told her husband what he had done, but the two men decided to spare the woman the truth. Pancoast’s experiment remained a secret for twenty-five years. After his death in 1909, the donor—a man ironically named Dr. Addison Davis Hard—confessed to the underhanded deed in a letter to Medical World.)

—How beautiful is death, when earned by virtue! 80 Who would not be that youth? what pity is it That we can die but once to serve our country!8 —Why sits this sadness on your brows, my friends? I should have blushed if Cato’s house had stood Secure, and flourished in a civil war. 85 —Portius, behold thy brother, and remember Thy life is not thy own, when Rome demands it.

Why are you showing so much cleavage?" Joseph growled into her ear as he took her arm and began to descend the staircase. Goosebumps broke out over her bare arms and shoulders. She squeezed his forearm and smiled into his eyes. "So you're forced to offer me your coat, of course, like a proper gentleman." He barely suppressed a snort as camera flashes lit them up from every angle. He tucked his arm around her and smiled for the photographers. "Would a gentleman rip what you're wearing clean off your body, before devouring every inch of your perfect body? Turn your shivers into sweat while you wonder how something so dirty could produce something so beautiful?" Addison grinned and gently turned his face towards hers to press a light kiss to his cheek without marking it. The cameras went wild.

The pleasures of the fancy are more conducive to health, than those of the understanding, which are worked out by dint of thinking, and attended with too violent a labour of the brain. Delightful scenes, whether in nature, painting, or poetry, have a kindly influence on the body, as well as the mind, and not only serve to clear and brighten the imagination, but are able to disperse grief and melancholy, and to set the animal spirits in pleasing and agreeable motions. For this reason Sir Francis Bacon, in his Essay upon Health, has not thought it improper to prescribe to his reader a poem or a prospect, where he particularly dissuades him from knotty and subtle disquisitions, and advises him to pursue studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature.

the patronage of literature has gone from the cultivated noble who appreciates in much accordance with the fashion of his time, and passed into the holding of the English people. Addison and Steele lived in the transition time between these periods. They were born into one of them and—Steele immediately, Addison through Steele's influence upon him—they were trusty guides into the other. Thus the 'Spectator' is not merely the best example of their skill. It represents also, perhaps best represents, a wholesome Revolution in our Literature. The essential character of English Literature was no more changed than characters of Englishmen were altered by the Declaration of Right which Prince William of Orange had accepted with the English Crown, when Addison had lately left and Steele was leaving Charterhouse for Oxford. Yet change there was, and Steele saw to the heart of it, even in his College days.

Here will I hold. If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud Thro' all her works), He must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy.

Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy in religion - a form of knowledge without the power of it.

He afterwards fell into an account of the diversions which had passed in his house during the holidays, for Sir Roger, after the laudable custom of his ancestors, always keeps open house at Christmas. I learned from him, that he had killed eight fat hogs for this season, that he had dealt about his chines very liberally amongst his neighbors, and that in particular he had sent a string of hog's puddings with a pack of cards to every poor family in the parish. "I have often thought," says Sir Roger, " it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of the 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.

Reading is to mind what exercise is to body.” - Joseph Addison

Paslm 19:1-6 - Interpretation 1 The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim. 2 Th'unwearied sun, from day to day, Does his Creator's power display; And publishes to every land The work of an almighty hand. 3 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: 4 Whilst all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole. 5 What though in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice or sound Amidst their radiant orbs be found; 6 In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, For ever singing as they shine, "The hand that made us is divine.

Psalm 19 1-6 Interpretation 1 The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim. 2 Th'unwearied sun, from day to day, Does his Creator's power display; And publishes to every land The work of an almighty hand. 3 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: 4 Whilst all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole. 5 What though in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice or sound Amidst their radiant orbs be found; 6 In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, For ever singing as they shine, "The hand that made us is divine.

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

Истинското щастие изисква уединение и е враг на показност и шум; то се ражда, на първо място от личната удовлетвореност, а на второ- от другарството и общуването с малцината любими същества.

There comes a time, we know not when, that marks the destiny of men.

Plutarch's Lives, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Chaucer, Imitation of Christ (Thomas a Kempis), Holy Living and Holy Dying (Jeremy Taylor), Pilgrim's Progress, Macaulay's Essays, Bacon's Essays, Addison's Essays, Essays of Elia (Charles Lamb), Les Miserables (Hugo), Heroes and Hero Worship (Carlyle), Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Wordsworth, Vicar of Wakefield, Adam Bede (George Eliot), Vanity Fair (Thackeray), Ivanhoe (Scott), On the Heights (Auerbach), Eugenie Grandet (Balzac), Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne), Emerson's Essays, Boswell's Life of Johnson, History of the English People (Green), Outlines of Universal History, Origin of Species, Montaigne's Essays, Longfellow, Tennyson, Browning, Whittier, Ruskin, Herbert Spencer.

One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.

Skaitymas protui - tolygu fiziniai pratimai kūnui.

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.

I was highly pleased to see the discipline of the pack, and the good-nature of the Knight, who could not find in his heart to murder a creature that had given him so much diversion.

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

Let Caesar have the world, if Marcia’s mine.

Lucius There fled the greatest soul that ever warmed 100 A Roman breast. O Cato! O my friend! Thy will shall be religiously observed. But let us bear this awful corpse to Caesar, And lay it in his sight, that it may stand A fence betwixt us and the victor’s wrath; 105 Cato, though dead, shall still protect his friends. From hence, let fierce contending nations know What dire effects from civil discord flow. ’Tis this that shakes our country with alarms, And gives up Rome a prey to Roman arms, 110 Produces fraud, and cruelty, and strife, And robs the guilty world of Cato’s life.  [Exeunt omnes.]

Cato Meanwhile we’ll sacrifice to liberty. Remember, O my friends, the laws, the rights, The generous plan of power delivered down, From age to age, by your renowned forefathers, 75 (So dearly bought, the price of so much blood,) Oh let it never perish in your hands! But piously transmit it to your children. Do thou, great liberty, inspire our souls, And make our lives in thy possession happy, 80 Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence.

—I’m sick to death—Oh when shall I get loose From this vain world, the abode of guilt and sorrow! —And yet methinks a beam of light breaks in On my departing soul. Alas! I fear 95 I’ve been too hasty. O ye powers that search The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, If I have done amiss, impute it not!— The best may err, but you are good, and—oh!  [Dies.]

Cato Trust me, Lucius, Our civil discords have produced such crimes, 5 Such monstrous crimes, I am surprised at nothing. —O Lucius! I am sick of this bad world! The day-light and the sun grow painful to me.

Cato Would Lucius have me live to swell the number Of Caesar’s slaves, or by a base submission 30 Give up the cause of Rome, and own a tyrant?

Cato Lose not a thought on me, I’m out of danger. Heaven will not leave me in the victor’s hand. Caesar shall never say, I conquered Cato. But, oh! my friends, your safety fills my heart With anxious thoughts: a thousand secret terrors 115 Rise in my soul: how shall I save my friends! ’Tis now, O Caesar, I begin to fear thee.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station.15

Cato Thy nobleness of soul obliges me. But know, young prince, that valour soars above 50 What the world calls misfortune and affliction. These are not ills; else would they never fall On heaven’s first favourites, and the best of men: The gods, in bounty, work up storms about us, That give mankind occasion to exert 55 Their hidden strength, and throw out into practice Virtues which shun the day, and lie concealed In the smooth seasons and the calms of life.14 Juba I’m charmed whene’er thou talk’st! I pant for virtue! And all my soul endeavours at perfection. 60 Cato Dost thou love watchings,15 abstinence, and toil, Laborious virtues all? learn them from Cato: Success and fortune must thou learn from Caesar.

Sit here, deliberating in cold debates, If we should sacrifice our lives to honour, Or wear them out in servitude and chains. Rouse up, for shame! our brothers of Pharsalia Point at their wounds, and cry aloud—To battle! 40 Great Pompey’s shade2 complains that we are slow, And Scipio’s ghost walks unrevenged amongst us!