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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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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
Soon
Counsels
Ignorance
Yields
Cause
Evils
Causes
Yield
Evil
Misery
Great
Easily
Always
Excited
Anger
Perfidious

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Every one knows the veneration which was paid by the Jews to a name so great, wonderful, and holy. They would not let it enter even into their religious discourses. What can we then think of those who make use of so tremendous a name, in the ordinary expression of their anger, mirth, and most impertinent passions?
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Blesses his stars and thinks it luxury.
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I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself--as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand.
Joseph Addison
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The intelligence of affection is carried on by the eye only good-breeding has made the tongue falsify the heart, and act a part of continued restraint, while nature has preserved the eyes to herself, that she may not be disguised or misrepresented.
Joseph Addison
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What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?
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
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Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
Joseph Addison
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A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.
Joseph Addison
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If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud Through all her works,) he must delight in virtue.
Joseph Addison
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Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.
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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The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.
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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Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.
Joseph Addison
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A fine coat is but a livery when the person who wears it discovers no higher sense than that of a footman.
Joseph Addison
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There is no passion that is not finely expressed in those parts of the inspired writings which are proper for divine songs and anthems.
Joseph Addison
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Our friends don't see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them.
Joseph Addison
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The ways of heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled in mazes, and perplex'd with errors Our understanding traces them in vain, Lost and bewilder'd in the fruitless search Nor sees with how much art the windings run, Nor where the regular confusion ends.
Joseph Addison
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T is the Divinity that stirs within us.
Joseph Addison
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But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letter, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind.
Joseph Addison