Joseph Addison Quotes

The English essayist and politician Joseph Addison (1672-1719) founded the "Spectator" periodical with Sir Richard Steele.

Profile Of Joseph Addison
Born: 1 May 1672
Birthplace: Milston, Wiltshire, England
Died: 17 June 1719
Location of death: London, England
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Author, Playwright
Nationality: England

Joseph Addison's Quotes
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.

It is a great presumption to ascribe our successes to our own management, and not to esteem our selves upon any blessing, rather as it is the bounty of heaven, than the acquisition of our own prudence.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have below.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

The truth of it is, learning, like travelling, and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable, by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.

A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

The disease of jealously is so malignant that is converts all it takes into its own nourishment.




Allegorical Tomb of Joseph Addison (1642-1719) Essayist and Poet


Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment

It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.

The woman that deliberates is lost.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

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.

Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.

There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to an human soul.

Golden Quotes For Life III

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

A new broom sweeps well, but an old one is best for the corners.

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.


Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.

Lost time is never found again. Give the best you've got today. That's recipe for a better tomorrow.

God Almighty hates a quitter.

In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.

In this world, there is always a danger for those who are afraid of it. The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.


Every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

The man who saves is the man who wins.

A humble man is like a good tree -- the more full of fruit the branches are the more they bend down.



The world is ruled by ideas. Thought is the beginning of practice. Thought begets action.

The young man who has the combination of the learning of books with the learning which comes of dong things with the hands need not worry about getting lost in the world today, or at any time.

A hero is to braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Be brave; be brave; man dies but once.

Golden Quotes For Life II

Where the river is deepest, it makes least noise.

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well-hammered yourself.

You must know something of everything and everything of something if you want to keep pace with the modern.

You seem to have no real purpose in life and won't realize at the age of twenty-two that if you want to succeed life means work, hard work and more of it.




Old men shall dream dreams, young men shall see visions.

Fame is but the breath of the people, and that often unwholesome.

Good manners are the techniques of expressing consideration for the feelings of others.

Hope is the most treacherous of human fancies.

Ignorance and absence of discipline are the cause of man's troubles.

Ordinary people think merely how they will spend their time; a man of intellect tries to use it.

Our knowlege is the amassed thought and experience of innumberable minds.

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.

Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.

Poverty and wealth, both are sins.

Prayer needs no speech.

Prayers and provender hinder no man's journey.

Pride ruined the angels.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Progress is the law of life, man is not man as yet.

Prosperity can change man's nature; it is difficult to resist the effects of good fortune.



There never was such beauty as in you. Nature made you, and then broke the mould. To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.

Golden Quotes For Life I

Smile a little,
Help a little,
Push a little,
The world needs you.

Work a little,
Wait a little,
Hope a little,
And don't get blue.

Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them.

Remember that great achievements involve great risks.

Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult.

Plant your words where profit lies: Whiter cloth takes faster dyes.

Poverty is not a shame, but being ashamed of it is.

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure.

When you start crowing you stop growing.

Preserve me from unreasonable and immoderate sleep.

Select a goal in life and thereafter put into it all your might.




Say Yes to life and let it come,
Bounding into heart and home,
Giving all it has to give,
Say your Yes to life and live.

Say No to life and day by day,
The fire of lit will die away,
leaving the ash for you to sieve,
leaving you nothing to please.


Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing. Advance with it.

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

The fact that you don't know is enough of curse;
Not to want to know is a fate that's much worse.

The feeble tremble before an opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, skilful direct it.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

The past, the present and the future are really one -- they are today.

The percentage of error will multiply the longer you deliberate.

The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun dissipated. When they are concentrated, they illuminate.

Between optimist and pessimist the difference is droll: The optimist sees the doughnut the pessimist sees the hole.

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.

Who shuts his hand, hath lost his gold. Who opens it, hath it twice told.

Quotations About Autumn

Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to Spring. For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.
~ Edwin Way Teale

A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated
to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The
acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter
how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air.
~ Eric Sloane


It was one of those perfect English autumnal days
which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
~ P. D. James

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting
and autumn a mosaic of them all.
~ Stanley Horowitz


There is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.
~ George Eliot


I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn
sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all
the daylight hours in the open air.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November.
~ Rose G. Kingsley

Winter is cold-hearted.
Spring is yea and nay,
Autumn is a weather-cock,
Blown every way.
Summer days for me.
When every leaf is on its tree.
~Christina Rossetti

Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity;
but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn
on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling
hills that reach to the far horizon?
~ Hal Borland


Autumn begins with a subtle change in the light, with skies
a deeper blue, and nights that become suddenly clear and
chilled. The season comes full with the first frost, the
disappearance of migrant birds, and the harvesting of
the season's last crops.
~ Glenn Wolff and Jerry Dennis


The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. ~Albert Camus


For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad. ~Edwin Way Teale


It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. ~P.D. James


Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter. ~Carol Bishop Hipps


Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot


Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~Stanley Horowitz


No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
~John Donne


Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.
~Emily Dickinson


Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. ~Samuel Butler


Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn. ~Elizabeth Lawrence

Quotations About Summer II

In June, as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them. ~Aldo Leopold


I question not if thrushes sing,
If roses load the air;
Beyond my heart I need not reach
When all is summer there.
~John Vance Cheney


Oh, the summer night
Has a smile of light
And she sits on a sapphire throne.
~Barry Cornwall


In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~Albert Camus


There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart. ~Celia Thaxter


The summer night is like a perfection of thought. ~Wallace Stevens


In summer, the song sings itself. ~William Carlos Williams


A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. ~James Dent


If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance. ~Bern Williams


Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
~Francis Thompson


To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.
~Emily Dickinson


What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade. ~Gertrude Jekyll


In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way
I have to go to bed by day.
~Robert Louis Stevenson


This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders. ~Sarah Orne Jewett



Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. ~Sam Keen


Summer has set in with its usual severity. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge


I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips. ~Violette Leduc


Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. ~Russel Baker



People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy. ~Anton Chekhov



Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic,
nourishing Night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!
~Walt Whitman

Quotations About Summer I

Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year - it brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul.


The serene philosophy of the pink rose is steadying. Its fragrant, delicate petals
open fully and are ready to fall, without regret or disillusion, after only a day
in the sun. It is so every summer. One can almost hear their pink, fragrant
murmur as they settle down upon the grass:
'Summer, summer, it will always be summer.'
~ Rachel Peden


That beautiful season the Summer!
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;
and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always
been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
~ Henry James


What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment
of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind
one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.
~ Gertrude Jekyll



Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass
on a summer day listening to the murmur of water,
or watching the clouds float across the sky,
is hardly a waste of time.
~ John Lubbock



Summer makes me drowsy,
Autumn makes me sing,
Winter’s pretty lousy,
but I hate Spring.
~ Dorothy Parker



Summer makes a silence after spring.
~ Vita Sackville-West


Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year.
It brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul.
~ Billy Graham


A life without love is like a year without summer.
~ Swedish Proverb


T'is now the summer of your youth. Time has not cropt the roses from
your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.
~ Edward Moore


Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you. ~Erma Bombeck


Do what we can, summer will have its flies. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. ~John Lubbock


No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.
~James Russell Lowell


Then followed that beautiful season... Summer....
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world. ~Ada Louise Huxtable