Quotes from Joseph Addison

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.

The spacious firmament on nigh, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim. Forever singing, as they shine, The hand that made us is divine.

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.

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.

How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!

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

Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind.

Were all the vexations of life put together, we should find that a great part of them proceed from those calumnies and reproaches we spread abroad concerning one another.

On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.

'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, and intimates eternity to man.

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us.

It is an unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions, at some laudable end.