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There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.

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
Pity
Regard
Eye
Dash
Nothing
Mirth
Much
Regards
Innocence
Folly

More quotes by Joseph Addison

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Adulterers, in the first stages of the church, were excommunicated forever, and unqualified all their lives for bearing a part in Christian assemblies, notwithstanding they might seek it with tears, and all the appearances of the most unfeigned repentance.
Joseph Addison
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I have but nine-pence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds.
Joseph Addison
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Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.
Joseph Addison
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Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
Joseph Addison
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The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
Joseph Addison
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Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
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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Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love, With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art.
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
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Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it courage which arises from a sense of duty acts in a uniform manner.
Joseph Addison
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A man with great talents, but void of discretion, is like Polyphemus in the fable, strong and blind, endued with an irresistible force, which for want of sight is of no use to him.
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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There is not a more pleasante exercise of the mind than gratitude.
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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By anticipation we sugar misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.
Joseph Addison
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A great large book is a great evil.
Joseph Addison
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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
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Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always, therefore, represented as blind.
Joseph Addison
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The time never lies heavy upon him it is impossible for him to be alone.
Joseph Addison
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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