The most exquisite words and finest strokes of an author are those which very often appear the most doubtful and exceptionable to a man who wants a relish for polite learning; and they are those which a sour undistinguishing critic generally attacks with the greatest violence.

— Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison Quotes

What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?

— 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

One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.

— Joseph Addison

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.

— Joseph Addison

Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.

— Joseph Addison

There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

— Joseph Addison

I should think myself a very bad woman, if I had done what I do for a farthing less.

— Joseph Addison

That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out.

— Joseph Addison

For wheresoe’er I turn my ravish’d eyes, Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise, Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground.

— Joseph Addison

My voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?

— Joseph Addison

Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.

— Joseph Addison

Love is a second life...

— Joseph Addison

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

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

— Joseph Addison

A common civility to an impertinent fellow, often draws upon one a great many unforeseen troubles; and if one doth not take particular care, will be interpreted by him as an overture of friendship and intimacy.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Joseph Addison

An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience.

— Joseph Addison

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.

— Joseph Addison

Conspiracies no sooner should be formed Than executed.

— Joseph Addison

All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter.

— Joseph Addison
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