English essayist, poet & playwright (1672-1719)
It is the duty of all who make philosophy the entertainment of their lives, to turn their thoughts to practical schemes for the good of society, and not pass away their time in fruitless searches, which tend rather to the ostentation of knowledge than the service of life.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, Dec. 9, 1710
Young men soon give and soon forget affronts; old age is slow in both.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Dec. 15, 1711
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
The Spectator, Jul. 18, 1711
Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"Instinct in Animals"
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 4, 1713
When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Thoughts in Westminster Abbey
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
Cato
The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
When I consider the question, whether there are such persons in the world as those we call witches? my mind is divided between the two opposite opinions; or rather (to speak my thoughts freely) I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as witchcraft; but at the same time can give no credit to any particular instance of it.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 117
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Poem to His Majesty
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Sept. 26, 1712
A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Dec. 8, 1711
But further, a man whose extraordinary reputation thus lifts him up to the notice and Observation of mankind, draws a multitude of eyes upon him that will narrowly inspect every part of him.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 256
To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Mar. 8, 1711
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Jul. 9, 1711
'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Many of these great natural geniuses, that were never disciplined and broken by rules of art, are to be found among the ancients, and in particular among those of the more Eastern parts of the world. Homer has innumerable flights that Virgil was not able to reach, and in the Old Testament we find several passages more elevated and sublime than any in Homer. At the same time that we allow a greater and more daring genius to the ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much failed in, or, if you will, that they were much above the nicety and correctness of the moderns. In their similitudes and allusions, provided there was a likeness, they did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison: thus Solomon resembles the nose of his beloved to the tower of Lebanon which looketh towards Damascus, as the coming of a thief in the night is a similitude of the same kind in the New Testament. It would be endless to make collections of this nature. Homer illustrates one of his heroes encompassed with the enemy, by an ass in a field of corn that has his sides belaboured by all the boys of the village without stirring a foot for it; and another of them tossing to and fro in his bed, and burning with resentment, to a piece of flesh broiled on the coals. This particular failure in the ancients opens a large field of raillery to the little wits, who can laugh at an indecency, but not relish the sublime in these sorts of writings. The present Emperor of Persia, conformable to this Eastern way of thinking, amidst a great many pompous titles, denominates himself "the sun of glory" and "the nutmeg of delight." In short, to cut off all cavilling against the ancients, and particularly those of the warmer climates, who had most heat and life in their imaginations, we are to consider that the rule of observing what the French call the bienseance in an allusion has been found out of later years, and in the colder regions of the world, where we could make some amends for our want of force and spirit by a scrupulous nicety and exactness in our compositions. Our countryman Shakespeare was a remarkable instance of this first kind of great geniuses.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"Genius", Essays and Tales