JOSEPH ADDISON

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

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

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.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

Jesters do often prove prophets.

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

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.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

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 wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

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.

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.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.