Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719)
English politician and writer.
When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
'Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul:
I think the Romans call it Stoicism.
Health and cheerfulness mutually beget each other.
Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood.
How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!
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.
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.
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.
I have somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much pleased me. I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this purpose; What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait,
And from your judgment must expect my fate.
From hence, let fierce contending nations know,
What dire effects from civil discord flow.
Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die,
And lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.
Cheerfulness is...the best promoter of health.
The friendships of the world are oft
Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure;
Ours has severest virtue for its basis,
And such a friendship ends not but with life.
Jesters do often prove prophets.
Blessings may appear under the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let him have patience, and he will see them in their proper figures.
There in no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.