Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, July 12, 1711

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, July 12, 1711

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, September 26, 1712

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, September 26, 1712

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

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.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

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

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison, Women and Liberty

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.

Joseph Addison, Women and Liberty

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison, (1672-1719)

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Friendship improves hapiness and reduces misery, by doubting our joys and dividing our grief.

Joseph Addison, (1672-1719)

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison, Cato

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.

Joseph Addison, Cato

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

English essayist, poet, & politician (1672 - 1719)

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

Joseph Addison