Joseph Addison
Good Nature, and Evenness of Temper, will give you an easie Companion for Life; Vertue and good Sense, an agreeable Friend; Love and Constancy, a good Wife or Husband. Where we meet one Person with all these Accomplishments, we find an Hundred without any one of them.Collection: Marriage
Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful.Collection: Beautiful
Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the contempt of which is great.Collection: Contempt
There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, "That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults." Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.Collection: Wine
Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.Collection: Discovery
In rising sighs and falling tears.Collection: Grief
Wine displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.Collection: Wine
How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?Collection: Fall
The ungrown glories of his beamy hair.Collection: Hair
The Gods in bounty work up storms about us, that give mankind occasion to exert their hidden strength, and throw our into practice virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed in the smooth seasons and the calms of life.Collection: Life
The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger.Collection: Men
A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.Collection: Men
Plutarch has written an essay on the benefits which a man may receive from his enemies; and among the good fruits of enmity, mentions this in particular, that by the reproaches which it casts upon us, we see the worst side of ourselves.Collection: Men
Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire.Collection: Life
The religious man fears, the man of honor scorns, to do an ill action.Collection: Religious
Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colors.Collection: Eye
The Lord my pasture shall prepare, And feed me with a shepherd's care; His presence shall my wants supply, And guard me with a watchful eye.Collection: Eye
Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn.Collection: Soul
Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.Collection: Inspirational
The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.Collection: Trying
A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world; and if in the present life his happiness arises from the subduing of his desires, it will arise in the next from the gratification of them.Collection: Blessing
Women were formed to temper Mankind, and sooth them into Tenderness and Compassion; not to set an Edge upon their Minds, and blowup in them those Passions which are too apt to rise of their own Accord.Collection: Women
This not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.Collection: Success
I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in any quotation.Collection: Latin
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: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the 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.Collection: Beautiful
When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I'm lost, in wonder, love and praise.Collection: Mercy Of God
Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.Collection: Life
If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use.Collection: Men
When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? My Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.Collection: Believe
A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.Collection: Reading
A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.Collection: Men
Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.Collection: Real
It happened very providentially, to the honor of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height.Collection: Christian
Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.Collection: Strength
The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang even at the moment of parting; yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half of its bitterness when uttered in accents that breathe love to the last sigh.Collection: Love
Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.Collection: Friendship Love
Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.Collection: Authorship
Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to their mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the nations of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another and be united together by their common interest.Collection: Taken
Nothing makes a woman more esteemed by the opposite sex than chastity; whether it be that we always prize those most who are hardest to come at, or that nothing besides chastity, with its collateral attendants, truth, fidelity, and constancy, gives a man a property in the person he loves, and consequently endears her to him above all things.Collection: Sex
The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.Collection: Voice
Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.Collection: Important
We make provisions for this life as if it were never to have an end, and for the other life as though it were never to have a beginning.Collection: Inspirational
Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.Collection: Husband
The schoolboy counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married.Collection: Holiday
A religious hope does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings but makes her rejoice in them.Collection: Hope
The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt.Collection: Art
If gratitude, when exerted towards another, naturally produces a very pleasing sensation in the mind of a grateful man, it exalts the soul into rapture when it is employed on this great object of gratitude to the beneficent Being who has given us everything we already possess, and from whom we expect everything we yet hope for.Collection: Thank You
A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.Collection: Money
A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those artsCollection: Music