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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Addison

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Addison

  Certain it is that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as that of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.   1
  Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health, and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.   2
  Content thyself to be obscurely good; / When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, / The post of honour is a private station.   3
  Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatsoever.   4
  Devotion, when it does not lie under the check of reason, is apt to degenerate into enthusiasm (fanaticism).   5
  Every passion gives a particular cast to the countenance, and is apt to discover itself in some feature or other.   6
  Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant, accommodates itself to the meanest capacities, silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible.   7
  Good-breeding shows itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears least.   8
  Goodman Fact is allowed by everybody to be a plain-spoken person, and a man of very few words; tropes and figures are his aversion.   9
  Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more aimiable than beauty.   10
  If any false step be made in the more momentous concerns of life, the whole scheme of ambitious designs is broken.   11
  If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.   12
  In the unhappy man forget the foe.   13
  Inward cheerfulness is an implicit praise and thanksgiving to Providence under all its dispensations.   14
  It is impossible for any man to form a right judgment of his neighbour’s sufferings.   15
  It is the work of a philosopher to be every day subduing his passions and laying aside his prejudices.   16
  Justice may be furnished out of fire, as far as her sword goes; and courage may be all over a continual blaze.   17
  Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.   18
  Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.   19
  Learn never to repine at your own misfortunes, or to envy the happiness of another.   20
  Love is not to be reason’d down or lost / In high ambition or a thirst of greatness.   21
  Man is the merriest species of the creation.   22
  Man’s conviction should be strong, and so well timed that worldly advantages may seem to have no share in it.   23
  Man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world.   24
  Men of the greatest abilities are most fired with ambition, and, on the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the least actuated by it.   25
  Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.   26
  Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.   27
  Much might be said on both sides.   28
  Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral and religious feelings.   29
  Nature has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of man’s own making.   30
  Niggardliness is not good husbandry.   31
  No thought is beautiful which is not just, and no thought can be just which is not founded on truth.   32
  One may often find as much thought on the reverse of a medal as in a canto of Spenser.   33
  Our friends see not our faults, or conceal them, or soften them.   34
  Patience had no sooner placed herself by the mount of sorrows, but the whole heap sunk to such a degree, that it did not appear a third part so big as it was before.   35
  Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.   36
  Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry and casts resolution itself into despair.   37
  Pride flows from want of reflection and ignorance of ourselves. Knowledge and humility come upon us together.   38
  Quick sensibility is inseparable from a ready understanding.   39
  Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.   40
  Some virtues are only seen in affliction, and some in prosperity.   41
  Speak that I may see thee.   42
  The even and cheerful temper makes us pleasing to ourselves, to those with whom we converse, and to Him whom we were made to please.   43
  The family is the proper province for private women to shine in.   44
  The jealous man’s disease is of so malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment.   45
  The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them, or, as the Italian proverb says, “The man who lives by hope will die by despair.”   46
  The proverb says of the Genoese, that they have a sea without fish, lands without trees, and men without faith.   47
  The schoolboy counts the time till the return of the holidays; the minor longs to be of age; the lover is impatient till he is married.   48
  The stars shall fade away, the sun himself / Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; / But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, / Unhurt amidst the war of elements, / The wrecks of matter and the crash of worlds.   49
  The true art of being agreeable is to appear well pleased with all the company, and rather to seem well entertained with them than to bring entertainment to them.   50
  The woman that deliberates is lost.   51
  There is no defence against reproach but obscurity.   52
  There is no real life but cheerful life.   53
  There is not in earth a spectacle more worthy than a great man superior to his sufferings.   54
  Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depressions of melancholy.   55
  ’Tis not in mortals to command success, / But we’ll do more, Sempronius—we’ll deserve it.   56
  ’Tis the divinity that stirs within us; / ’Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, / And intimates eternity to man.   57
  True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.   58
  Unbounded courage and compassion join’d, / Tempting each other in the victor’s mind, / Alternately proclaim him good and great, / And make the hero and the man complete.   59
  We are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.   60
  Wit is a pernicious thing when it is not tempered with virtue and humanity.   61
  Without discretion learning is pedantry and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness. The best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice.   62
  Young men soon give, and soon forget affronts; old age is slow in both.   63