English essayist, poet & playwright (1672-1719)
There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Freeholder, Jan. 6, 1716
Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have here below.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
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
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
Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Sep. 10, 1711
For wheresoe'er I turn my ravished eyes, gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise, poetic fields encompass me around, and still I seem to tread on classic ground.
JOSEPH ADDISON
A Letter from Italy
Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Nov. 24, 1711
A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Feb. 2, 1712
Justice is that which is practiced by God himself, and to be practiced in its perfection by none but him. Omniscience and omnipotence are requisite for the full exertion of it.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 4, 1713
Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die, and lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
Health and cheerfulness mutually beget each other.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, No. 387
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles at the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
There is no character more frequently given to a writer than that of being a genius. I have heard many a little sonneteer called a fine genius. There is not a heroic scribbler in the nation that has not his admirers who think him a great genius; and as for your smatterers in tragedy, there is scarce a man among them who is not cried up by one or other for a prodigious genius.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"Genius", Essays and Tales
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
It is ridiculous for any man to criticize on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, Oct. 19, 1710
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
Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Guardian, Jul. 4, 1713
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
Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"Instinct in Animals"
'Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul:
I think the Romans call it Stoicism.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato