Quote

Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings.

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
May
Gratification
Music
Indulge
Without
Excess
Injury
Mankind
Moral
Religious
Feelings
Sensual

More quotes by Joseph Addison

Image
What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?
Joseph Addison
Image
Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always, therefore, represented as blind.
Joseph Addison
Image
With what astonishment and veneration may we look into our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue and knowledge, such inexhaustible sources of perfection. We know not yet what we shall be, nor will it ever enter into the heart to conceive the glory that will be always in reserve for it.
Joseph Addison
Image
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?
Joseph Addison
Image
Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.
Joseph Addison
Image
The care of our national commerce redounds more to the riches and prosperity of the public than any other act of government.
Joseph Addison
Image
Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.
Joseph Addison
Image
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
Image
An honest man, that is not quite sober, has nothing to fear.
Joseph Addison
Image
Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.
Joseph Addison
Image
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
Image
Among the English authors, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch the weak, superstitious part of his readers' imagination, and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius.
Joseph Addison
Image
There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.
Joseph Addison
Image
Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
Joseph Addison
Image
Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all our unhappiness.
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
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
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
Image
There is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of all ages, as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general name of punning.
Joseph Addison
Image
Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.
Joseph Addison