English essayist, poet & playwright (1672-1719)
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 4, 1713
That rebellion is one of the most heinous crimes which it is in the power of man to commit, may appear from several considerations. First, as it destroys the end of all government, and the benefits of civil society. Government was instituted for maintaining the peace, safety, and happiness of a people. These great ends are brought about by a general conformity and submission to that frame of laws which is established in every community, for the protection of the innocent, and the punishment of the guilty. As on the one side men are secured in the quiet possession of their lives, properties, and everything they have a right to; so on the other side, those who offer them any injury in these particulars, are subject to penalties proportioned to their respective offences. Government, therefore, mitigates the inequality of power among particular persons, and makes an innocent man, though of the lowest rank, a match for the mightiest of his fellow subjects; since he has the force of the whole community on his side, which is able to control the insolence or injustice of any private oppressor. Now rebellion disappoints all these ends and benefits of government, by raising a power in opposition to that authority which has been established among a people for their mutual welfare and defence. So that rebellion is as great an evil to society, as government itself is a blessing.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Freeholder, Jan. 30, 1716
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Poem to His Majesty
In short, if you banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, November 24, 1711
A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence; but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Freeholder, Feb. 3, 1716
The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Sep. 21, 1713
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
A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. It heightens all the virtues which it accompanies; like the shades in paintings, it raises and rounds every figure, and makes the colours more beautiful, though not so glaring as they would be without it.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, November 24, 1711
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
It is odd to consider what great geniuses are sometimes thrown away upon trifles.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"Genius", Essays and Tales
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
The Freeholder, Feb. 3, 1716
Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die, and lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behaviour is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Jul. 20, 1711
Were all the vexations of life put together, we should find that a great part of them proceed from those calumnies and reproaches we spread abroad concerning one another.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, September 15, 1714
Nature is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, Aug. 26, 1710
Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Chill'd with tears, kill'd with fears, endless torments dwell about thee: yet who would live, and live without thee!
JOSEPH ADDISON
Rosamond
True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, August 15, 1712
Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Dec. 29, 1711
Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 18, 1713