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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

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Joseph Addison
Age: 47 †
Born: 1672
Born: May 1
Died: 1719
Died: June 17
Editor
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Journalist
Librettist
Playwright
Poet
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Writer
Milston
Wiltshire
Joseph Addisson
Right Hon. Joseph Addison
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The most exquisite words and finest strokes of an author are those which very often appear the most doubtful and exceptionable to a man who wants a relish for polite learning and they are those which a sour undistinguishing critic generally attacks with the greatest violence.
Joseph Addison
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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.
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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.
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A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.
Joseph Addison
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Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.
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Let echo, too, perform her part, Prolonging every note with art And in a low expiring strain, Play all the comfort o'er again.
Joseph Addison
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It is ridiculous for any man to criticize on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances.
Joseph Addison
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Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
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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.
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The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.
Joseph Addison
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Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.
Joseph Addison
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Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries. A marriage of love is pleasant a marriage of interest, easy and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.
Joseph Addison
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A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world and if in the present life his happiness arises from the subduing of his desires, it will arise in the next from the gratification of them.
Joseph Addison
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Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.
Joseph Addison
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Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.
Joseph Addison
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There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults. Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.
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An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
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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
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Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.
Joseph Addison
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Plutarch has written an essay on the benefits which a man may receive from his enemies and among the good fruits of enmity, mentions this in particular, that by the reproaches which it casts upon us, we see the worst side of ourselves.
Joseph Addison