Joseph Addison
Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.Collection: Courage
There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performanceCollection: Thank You
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.Collection: Book
Content thyself to be obscurely good.Collection: Thyself
Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.Collection: Silence
Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.Collection: Stupid
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.Collection: Inspirational
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.Collection: Laughter
True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.Collection: Animal
There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being,--that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.Collection: Truth
Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.Collection: Ignorance
Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion--a form of knowledge without the power of it.Collection: Hypocrisy
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.Collection: Hard Work
Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.Collection: Favors
Nature is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite.Collection: Nature
Every man in the time of courtship and in the first entrance of marriage, puts on a behavior like my correspondent's holiday suit.Collection: Holiday
The soul, considered with its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity without a possibility of touching it; and can there be a thought so transporting as to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to Him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness?Collection: Perfection
Though there is a benevolence due to all mankind, none can question but a superior degree of it is to be paid to a father, a wife, or child. In the same manner, though our love should reach to the whole species, a greater proportion of it should exert itself towards that community in which Providence has placed us. This is our proper sphere of action, the province allotted us for the exercise of our civil virtues, and in which alone we have opportunities of expressing our goodwill to mankind.Collection: Children
An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.Collection: Men
In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.Collection: Honor
I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since they have the same improvable minds as the male part of their species.Collection: Women
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.Collection: Stupid
Hudibras has defined nonsense, as Cowley does wit, by negatives. Nonsense, he says, is that which is neither true nor false. These two great properties of nonsense, which are always essential to it, give it such a peculiar advantage over all other writings, that it is incapable of being either answered or contradicted.Collection: Writing
A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.Collection: Strong
If I can in any way contribute to the Diversion or Improvement of the Country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret Satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.Collection: Country
Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses.Collection: Science
It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to them by such a division. [as they realise their problems could be worse!]Collection: Gratitude
For ever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine.Collection: Hands
The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.Collection: Secret
There is no talent so pernicious as eloquence to those who have it under command.Collection: Talent
The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.Collection: Numbers
The talent of turning men into ridicule, and exposing to laughter those one converses with, is the qualification of little ungenerous tempers.Collection: Laughter
When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.Collection: Men
It is pleasant to see a notorious profligate seized with a concern for religion, and converting his spleen into zeal.Collection: Notorious
There is a great amity between designing and art.Collection: Art
A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility only, denominate men great and glorious.Collection: Humility
Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour.Collection: Happiness
I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.Collection: Gentleman
The memory is perpetually looking back when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in animals that are filled with food, on which they may ruminate when their present pastures fail.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Care
There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride.Collection: Passion
The discreet man finds out the talents of those he converses with, and knows how to apply them to proper uses. Accordingly, if we look into particular communities and divisions of men, we may observe that it is the discreet man, not the witty, nor the learned, nor the brave, who guides the conversation, and gives measures to the society.Collection: Witty
Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.Collection: Sweet
Men who profess a state of neutrality in times of public danger, desert the common interest of their fellow subjects; and act with independence to that constitution into which they are incorporated. The safety of the whole requires our joint endeavours. When this is at stake, the indifferent are not properly a part of the community; or rather are like dead limbs, which are an encumbrance to the body, instead of being of use to it.Collection: Men
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.Collection: Beauty
There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.Collection: Nature
A jealous man is very quick in his application: he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrick on another.Collection: Jealous
If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud Through all her works,) he must delight in virtue.Collection: Nature