English essayist, poet & playwright (1672-1719)
Young men soon give and soon forget affronts; old age is slow in both.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view I'm lost,
In wonder, love and praise.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Hymn
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
Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Sep. 13, 1711
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Poem to His Majesty
For how few ambitious men are there, who have got as much fame as they desired, and whose thirst after it has not been as eager in the very height of their reputation, as it was before they became known and eminent among men?
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 256
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.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Song for St. Cecilia's Day
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
Thy father's merit sets thee up to view,
And shows thee in the fairest point of light,
To make thy virtues, or thy faults, conspicuous.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Jul. 9, 1711
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Sep. 21, 1713
Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.
JOSEPH ADDISON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
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
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
Those marriages generally abound most with love and constancy that are preceded by a long courtship.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Dec. 29, 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