Remarks by Joseph Addison | V2Melody Quotations

“Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.”

A jest on opera words that music will not carry unless they are light · The Spectator, No. 18, 21 March 1711

“What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.”

A rebuke to the habit of judging by faults alone · The Spectator

“Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.”

Reading offered as the best use of idle hours · The Spectator

“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.”

Hope without probability treated as a waste of living · The Spectator

“When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me.”

Mortality as the solvent of rivalry and display · Essay on Westminster Abbey, The Spectator

“A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.”

Suffering weighted by disposition as much as by the blow itself · The Spectator, No. 146

“The great aim of these my speculations is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain.”

The periodical claimed as a civic instrument of manners · The Spectator

“Fine writing consists of sentiments which are natural, without being obvious.”

Style defined as the familiar made freshly exact · Essay, as cited and praised by Hume

“Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing is more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.”

A line drawn between genuine reserve and its counterfeit · The Spectator

“He only is a great man who can neglect the applause of the multitude and enjoy himself independent of its favor.”

Greatness defined as independence from the crowd's praise · The Spectator

“A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world.”

Conscience given precedence over public opinion · The Spectator

“Tis not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius; we'll deserve it.”

Merit placed above the uncontrollable outcome of events · Cato, a Tragedy

“We are always doing something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us.”

A dry joke on the one-way traffic of duty to the unborn · The Spectator

“Upon the whole, a contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.”

Inward sufficiency ranked above outward fortune · The Spectator, No. 574, 30 July 1714

“A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.”

Contentment measured against need rather than against others · The Spectator, No. 574, 30 July 1714

“The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their lives which infallibly destroy them.”

Anxiety about dying as itself a cause of harm · The Spectator, No. 25, 24 March 1711

“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.”

A distinction between passing gaiety and a settled brightness of temper · The Spectator

“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.”

Authorship imagined as a gift sent forward in time · The Spectator

“What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.”

Education as the art that reveals the form already in the stone · The Spectator, No. 215, 6 November 1711

“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 to dwell in clubs and coffee-houses.”

Learning claimed for ordinary social hours, not only the study · The Spectator, No. 10

“True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises from the enjoyment of one's self, and from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.”

Happiness placed in inward ease and a small circle rather than display · The Spectator, No. 15, 17 March 1711

“Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.”

The pose of detached observation that names the paper itself · The Spectator, No. 1, 1 March 1711

“I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.”

The stated aim of his essays as public moral conversation · The Spectator, No. 10, 11 March 1711

“To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.”

Describing justice as humanity’s highest moral aspiration · The Spectator, essay

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