Quote

The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

Joseph Addison

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joseph Addison
Age: 47 †
Born: 1672
Born: May 1
Died: 1719
Died: June 17
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Writer
Milston
Wiltshire
Joseph Addisson
Right Hon. Joseph Addison
Utmost
Extent
Literature
Knowledge
Nothing
Men

More quotes by Joseph Addison

Image
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
Joseph Addison
Image
What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?
Joseph Addison
Image
Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition.
Joseph Addison
Image
When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition.
Joseph Addison
Image
Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.
Joseph Addison
Image
Whilst I yet live, let me not live in vain.
Joseph Addison
Image
Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.
Joseph Addison
Image
We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.
Joseph Addison
Image
There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.
Joseph Addison
Image
Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.
Joseph Addison
Image
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
Image
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
Joseph Addison
Image
The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented.
Joseph Addison
Image
A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.
Joseph Addison
Image
Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.
Joseph Addison
Image
I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.
Joseph Addison
Image
Adulterers, in the first stages of the church, were excommunicated forever, and unqualified all their lives for bearing a part in Christian assemblies, notwithstanding they might seek it with tears, and all the appearances of the most unfeigned repentance.
Joseph Addison
Image
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
Joseph Addison
Image
It is certain that there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated.
Joseph Addison
Image
The jealous man's disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment.
Joseph Addison