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A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.
Joseph Addison
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Joseph Addison
Age: 47 †
Born: 1672
Born: May 1
Died: 1719
Died: June 17
Editor
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Journalist
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Milston
Wiltshire
Joseph Addisson
Right Hon. Joseph Addison
Pleasure
Mild
Whether
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Black
Seldom
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More quotes by 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
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
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
Joseph Addison
Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.
Joseph Addison
There is a great amity between designing and art.
Joseph Addison
I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.
Joseph Addison
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
Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.
Joseph Addison
Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.
Joseph Addison
Waning moons their settled periods keep, to swell the billows and ferment the deep.
Joseph Addison
It happened very providentially, to the honor of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height.
Joseph Addison
The greatest parts, without discretion as observed by an elegant writer, may be fatal to their owner as Polyphemus, deprived of his eyes, was only the more exposed on account of his enormous strength and stature.
Joseph Addison
There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.
Joseph Addison
The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang even at the moment of parting yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half of its bitterness when uttered in accents that breathe love to the last sigh.
Joseph Addison
Life is not long enough for a coquette to play all her tricks in.
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
When a man has been guilty of any vice or folly, the best atonement he can make for it is to warn others not to fall into the like.
Joseph Addison
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.
Joseph Addison
That courage which arises from the sense of our duty, and from the fear of offending Him that made us, acts always in a uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right reason.
Joseph Addison
A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections
Joseph Addison
