Quotes

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Joseph Addison

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

Joseph Addison

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

Joseph Addison

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

Joseph Addison

One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success.

Joseph Addison

Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.

Joseph Addison

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

Joseph Addison

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

Joseph Addison

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

Joseph Addison

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

Joseph Addison

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

Joseph Addison

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Joseph Addison

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

Joseph Addison

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

Joseph Addison

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

Joseph Addison

Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.

Joseph Addison

Jesters do often prove prophets.

Joseph Addison

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

Joseph Addison

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Joseph Addison

Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!

Joseph Addison