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Joseph Addison Biography

Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend, Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine.

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Joseph Addison Quotes

I Have often thought if the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool. There are infinite reveries, numberless extravagances, and a perpetual train of vanities which pass through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words.

Differences, Fly, Lets, Men, Pick, Wise

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.

Criminals, Modesty, False Modesty, True, Avoids

Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

Fed, Life, Passion, Respect, Short, Unless

Music religious heat inspires, It wakes the soul, and lifts it high, And wings it with sublime desires, And fits it to bespeak the Deity.

Deity, Heat, Inspires, Music, Religious, Wings

A common civility to an impertinent fellow, often draws upon one a great many unforeseen troubles; and if one doth not take particular care, will be interpreted by him as an overture of friendship and intimacy.

Care, Common, Impertinent, Intimacy, Trouble, Unforeseen

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter.

Certain, Children, Daughter, Kind, Mother Daughter, Thank You

The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo.

Character, Destiny, Fate, Play, Written

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.

Contemporaries, Dates, Great Day, Read, Years, Yesterday

For ever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine.

Divine, Hand, Hands, Shine, Shining, Singing

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

Advice, Good Advice, Literature, Receive, Reluctance

The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome.

Clouds, Dawn, Fate, Morning, Overcast

In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

Common, Good, Running, Ten, Wisdom, Wise

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

Avoid, Care, Heart, Men

Supposing all the great points of atheism were formed into a kind of creed, I would fain ask whether it would not require an infinite greater measure of faith than any set of articles which they so violently oppose.

Atheism, Infinite, Kind, Oppose, Require

I. . . recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for.

Day, Incline, Men, Omission, Space, State

Were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him than from those evils which had really befallen him.

Apprehension, Evil, Fear, Found, Life, Men

Quick sensitivity is inseperable from a ready understanding.

Quick, Ready, Sensitivity, Understanding

Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Repeats the story of her birth.

Listening, Moon, Repeats, Stories, Takes, Tale

How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new improvements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created?

Created, Fall, Improvements, Men, Perfection

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.

Man, Men, Might, Miserable, Please, Single

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