English essayist, poet & playwright (1672-1719)
Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have here below.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Dec. 15, 1711
Young men soon give and soon forget affronts; old age is slow in both.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"Instinct in Animals"
The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger: the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind; the latter to preserve themselves.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Jul. 18, 1711
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 4, 1713
When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Thoughts in Westminster Abbey
Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud through all her works) he must delight in virtue.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
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 (to speak my thoughts freely) 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.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 117
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
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.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Dec. 8, 1711
If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Sept. 26, 1712
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Poem to His Majesty
But further, a man whose extraordinary reputation thus lifts him up to the notice and Observation of mankind, draws a multitude of eyes upon him that will narrowly inspect every part of him.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 256
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Jul. 9, 1711
To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Mar. 8, 1711
'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence; but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Freeholder, Feb. 3, 1716