Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

Quotes

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

• I think I may define taste to be that faculty of the soul which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike.

• 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.

• It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, 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.

• Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.

• 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.

• An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

• 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!

• Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

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

• If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling.

• Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.

• 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.

• Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

• To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.

• A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

• Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

• 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.

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

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