Joseph Addison
Unbounded courage and compassion join'd, Tempering each other in the victor's mind, Alternately proclaim him good and great, And make the hero and the man complete.Collection: Courage
What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?Collection: Crush
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. - Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and cringes over the most obstinate and inflexible. - Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens; confounded their statesmen; struck their orators dumb; and at length argued them out of all their liberties.Collection: Wisdom
The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.Collection: Morning
Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.Collection: Silly
It must be a prospect pleasing to God Himself to see His creation forever beautifying in His eyes, and drawing nearer Him by greater degrees of resemblance.Collection: Eye
A source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold Him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of His perfections, we see everything that we can imagine as great glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by His goodness and surrounded by an immensity of love and mercy.Collection: God
In my Lucia's absence Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden; I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear, And grief, and rage and love rise up at once, And with variety of pain distract me.Collection: Pain
Half the misery of human life might be extinguished if men would alleviate the general curse they lie under by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence, and humanity.Collection: Kindness
The very first discovery of beauty strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties.Collection: Beauty
Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either by the prejudice of education or by a deference to the judgment of those who perhaps in their own hearts disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude.Collection: Heart
We are apt to rely upon future prospects, and become really expensive while we are only rich in possibility. We live up to our expectations, not to our possessions, and make a figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are.Collection: Rely Upon
By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.Collection: Stars
There is a kind of grandeur and respect which the meanest and most insignificant part of mankind endeavor to procure in the little circle of their friends and acquaintance. The poorest mechanic, nay, the man who lives upon common alms, gets him his set of admirers, and delights in that superiority which he enjoys over those who are in some respects beneath him. This ambition, which is natural to the soul of man, might, methinks, receive a very happy turn; and, if it were rightly directed, contribute as much to a person's advantage, as it generally does to his uneasiness and disquiet.Collection: Ambition
Content has a kindly influence on the soul of man, in respect of every being to whom he stands related. It extinguishes all murmuring, repining, and ingratitude toward that Being who has allotted us our part to act in the world. It destroys all inordinate ambition; gives sweetness to the conversation, and serenity to all the thoughts; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire of them.Collection: Ambition
Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth.Collection: Music
If our zeal were true and genuine we should be much more angry with a sinner than a heretic.Collection: Should
The moral virtues, without religion are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.Collection: Ideas
It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.Collection: Greatness
It is always to be understood that a lady takes all you detract from the rest of her sex to be a gift to her.Collection: Sex
I would fain ask one of these bigotted Infidels, supposing all the great Points of Atheism... were laid together and formed into a kind of Creed, according to the Opinions of the most celebrated Atheists; I say, supposing such a Creed as this were formed, and imposed upon any one People in the World, whether it would not require an infinitely greater Measure of Faith, than any Set of Articles which they so violently oppose.Collection: Faith
The Fashionable World is grown free and easie; our Manners sit more loose upon us: Nothing is so modish as an agreeable Negligence. In a word, Good Breeding shows it self most, where to an ordinary Eye it appears the least.Collection: Eye
It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belongto his Neighbour.Collection: Sports
Female Virtues are of a Domestick turn. The Family is the proper Province for Private Women to Shine in. If they must be showing their Zeal for the Publick, let it not be against those who are perhaps of the same Family, or at least of the same Religion or Nation, but against those who are the open, professed, undoubted Enemies of their Faith, Liberty, and Country.Collection: Country
I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways findtheir Account in the Speculation of the Day.Collection: May
In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.Collection: Wise
I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what be calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute.Collection: Believe
My voice is still for war.Collection: War
God discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will hereafter entitle many to the reward of actions which they had never the opportunity of performing.Collection: Opportunity
Religion prescribes to every miserable man the means of bettering his condition; nay, it shows him that the bearing of his afflictions as he ought to do, will naturally end in the removal of them.Collection: Mean
A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.Collection: Greatness
Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making.Collection: Drama
Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.Collection: Fall
One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.Collection: Men
Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the face; she has touched it with vermilion, planted in it a double row of ivory, made it the seat of smiles and blushes, lighted it up and enlivened it with the brightness of the eyes, hung it on each side with curious organs of sense, given it airs and graces that cannot be described, and surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light.Collection: Art
Temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor.Collection: Play
A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfectionsCollection: Inspiration
I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.Collection: Education
Colors speak all languages.Collection: Color
Every wife ought to answer for her man. If the husband be engaged in a seditious club, or drinks mysterious healths, or be frugal of his candles on a rejoicing night, let her look to him and keep him out of harm's way; or the world will be apt to say, she has a mind to be a widow before her time. She ought, in such cases, to exert the authority of the curtain lecture; and if she finds him of a rebellious disposition, to tame him, as they do birds of prey, by dinning him in the ears all night long.Collection: Husband
Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.Collection: Men
Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.Collection: Health
Supposing all the great points of atheism were formed into a kind of creed, I would fain ask whether it would not require an infinite greater measure of faith than any set of articles which they so violently oppose.Collection: Atheism
The jealous man's disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment.Collection: Jealousy
Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate in.Collection: Circles
The world is so full of ill-nature that I have lampoons sent me by people who cannot spell, and satires composed by those who scarce know how to write.Collection: Writing
Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.Collection: Humanity