Joseph Addison
It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.Collection: Vanity
A brother's sufferings claim a brother's pity.Collection: Sympathy
Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable.Collection: Complacency
Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.Collection: Character
Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.Collection: Time
My death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me.Collection: Destiny
I should think myself a very bad woman, if I had done what I do for a farthing less.Collection: Thinking
Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.Collection: Men
Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.Collection: Love
There is nothing touches our imagination so much as a beautiful woman in a plain dress.Collection: Beautiful
My heart leaps at the trumpet's voice.Collection: Heart
There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former.Collection: Life
It must be so, Plato, thou reason'st well!Collection: Plato
Plutarch says very finely that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies.Collection: Hate
In the loss of an object we do not proportion our grief to the real value it bears, but to the value our fancies set upon it.Collection: Real
A state of temperance, sobriety and justice without devotion is a cold, lifeless, insipid condition of virtue, and is rather to be styled philosophy than religion.Collection: Philosophy
Thy steady temper, Portius, Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud, and Cæsar, In the calm lights of mild philosophy.Collection: Philosophy
Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love, With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art.Collection: Music
Justice is that which is practiced by God himself, and to be practiced in its perfection by none but him. Omniscience and omnipotence are requisite for the full exertion of it.Collection: Omnipotence
E'en the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom, and trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.Collection: Weed
A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.Collection: Nature
The gloomy months of November, when the people of England hang and drown themselves.Collection: People
There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.Collection: Humanity
A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and should make a due discrimination between those that are and those that are not the proper objects of it.Collection: Discrimination
Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries. A marriage of love is pleasant; a marriage of interest, easy; and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.Collection: Sweet
It is wonderful to see persons of sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards.Collection: Passing Away
A fine coat is but a livery when the person who wears it discovers no higher sense than that of a footman.Collection: Coats
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.Collection: Laughter
The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he does not know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts--or, in other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and the other always enjoying it.Collection: Wise
Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion.Collection: Perfection
What can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being?Collection: Bible
I consider time as an in immense ocean, in which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up.Collection: Ocean
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.Collection: Life
The Infusion of a China plant sweetened with the pith of an Indian Cane.Collection: Food
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.Collection: Passion
Marriage enlarges the Scene of our Happiness and Miseries.Collection: Marriage
The greatest parts, without discretion as observed by an elegant writer, may be fatal to their owner; as Polyphemus, deprived of his eyes, was only the more exposed on account of his enormous strength and stature.Collection: Eye
The peacock in all his pride does not display half the colors that appear in the garments of a British lady when she is dressed.Collection: Pride
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.Collection: Nature
There is no passion that is not finely expressed in those parts of the inspired writings which are proper for divine songs and anthems.Collection: Bible
The English Writers of Tragedy are possessed with a Notion, that when they represent a virtuous or innocent Person in Distress, they ought not to leave him till they have delivered him out of his Troubles, or made him triumph over his Enemies.Collection: Innocent Person
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.Collection: Eye
Troops of heroes undistinguished die.Collection: Hero
I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter.Collection: Fall
There are greater depths and obscurities, greater intricacies and perplexities, in an elaborate and well-written piece of nonsense, than in the most abstruse and profound tract of school divinity.Collection: School
Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.Collection: Party
I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.Collection: Thinking
Fables take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it.Collection: Fables