Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.
Joseph Addison
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Heart
Distinguished
Believe
Faculty
Men
Naturally
Laughter
Creatures
Capable
Logicians
Literature
Disposed
May
Mirth
More quotes by Joseph Addison
There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
Joseph Addison
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.
Joseph Addison
Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
Joseph Addison
It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights.
Joseph Addison
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
There are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of Nature, find work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.
Joseph Addison
The Fear of Death often proves Mortal.
Joseph Addison
Is it not wonderful, that the love of the parent should be so violent while it lasts and that it should last no longer than is necessary for the preservation of the young?
Joseph Addison
Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.
Joseph Addison
Government mitigates the inequality of power, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow-subjects.
Joseph Addison
It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.
Joseph Addison
The time never lies heavy upon him it is impossible for him to be alone.
Joseph Addison
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
A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors.
Joseph Addison
Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.
Joseph Addison
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
Joseph Addison
For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.
Joseph Addison
It was a saying of an ancient philosopher, which I find some of our writers have ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, who perhaps might have taken occasion to repeat it, that a good face is a letter of recommendation.
Joseph Addison
What I spent I lost what I possessed is left to others what I gave away remains with me.
Joseph Addison
Tis not my talent to conceal my thoughts, Or carry smiles and sunshine in my face, When discontent sits heavy at my heart.
Joseph Addison