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Should a writer single out and point his raillery at particular persons, or satirize the miserable, he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man if he could please himself.

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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Poet
Politician
Writer
Milston
Wiltshire
Joseph Addisson
Right Hon. Joseph Addison
Sure
Readers
Point
Ill
Part
Miserable
Persons
Reader
Might
Please
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Great
Single
Satire
Men
Particular
Pleasing

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.
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.
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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.
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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
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One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.
Joseph Addison
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What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
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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The spacious firmament on high, And all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim.
Joseph Addison
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Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.
Joseph Addison
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Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture.
Joseph Addison
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Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.
Joseph Addison
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There is not, in my opinion, anything more mysterious in nature than this instinct in animals, which thus rise above reason, and yet fall infinitely short of it.
Joseph Addison
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Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.
Joseph Addison
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If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
Joseph Addison
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Supposing all the great points of atheism were formed into a kind of creed, I would fain ask whether it would not require an infinite greater measure of faith than any set of articles which they so violently oppose.
Joseph Addison
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There is not a more pleasante exercise of the mind than gratitude.
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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The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger.
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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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