Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Enjoy
Sight
Retired
Earth
Forward
Anticipation
Lose
Sugar
Loses
Wander
Shall
Misery
Stars
Parts
Heaven
Eternity
Wandering
Happiness
Sun
Heavens

More quotes by Joseph Addison

Image
To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.
Joseph Addison
Image
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
Image
Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire for them.
Joseph Addison
Image
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
Image
There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
Joseph Addison
Image
It is ridiculous for any man to criticize on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances.
Joseph Addison
Image
There is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and satires that are written with wit and spirit are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.
Joseph Addison
Image
Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
Joseph Addison
Image
If men, who in their hearts are friends to a government, forbear giving it their utmost assistance against its enemies, they put it in the power of a few desperate men to ruin the welfare of those who are much superior to them in strength, number, and interest.
Joseph Addison
Image
Jesters do often prove prophets.
Joseph Addison
Image
What can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being?
Joseph Addison
Image
Love is a second life it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
Joseph Addison
Image
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
Joseph Addison
Image
What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.
Joseph Addison
Image
One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.
Joseph Addison
Image
Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
Joseph Addison
Image
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
Image
Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.
Joseph Addison
Image
Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
Joseph Addison
Image
The passion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair sex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who desire to be admired for that which only deserves admiration.
Joseph Addison