Quote

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

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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
Wells
Description
Well
Chosen
Sight
Giving
Gives
Great
Words
Things
Force
Often
Ideas
Lively

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo.
Joseph Addison
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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
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Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.
Joseph Addison
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It is wonderful to see persons of sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards.
Joseph Addison
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Health and happiness give rise to each other.
Joseph Addison
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Oh, Liberty! thou goddess heavenly bright! Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight! Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign, And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train.
Joseph Addison
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I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.
Joseph Addison
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From hence, let fierce contending nations know, what dire effects from civil discord flow.
Joseph Addison
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In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.
Joseph Addison
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Poverty palls the most generous spirits it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.
Joseph Addison
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The first race of mankind used to dispute, as our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of wild logic, uncultivated by rule of art.
Joseph Addison
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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
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Thy steady temper, Portius, Can look on guilt, rebellion, fraud, and Cæsar, In the calm lights of mild philosophy.
Joseph Addison
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Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.
Joseph Addison
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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
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The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Joseph Addison
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From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor.
Joseph Addison
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A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and should make a due discrimination between those that are and those that are not the proper objects of it.
Joseph Addison
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Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves.
Joseph Addison
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There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.
Joseph Addison