I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs. - Joseph Addison
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life. - Joseph Addison
A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without. - Joseph Addison
Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul. - Joseph Addison
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! - Joseph Addison
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable. - Joseph Addison
True happiness... arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self. - Joseph Addison
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. - Joseph Addison
True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it 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. - Joseph Addison
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. - Joseph Addison
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer. - Joseph Addison
Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station. - Joseph Addison
To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude. - Joseph Addison
I think I may define taste to be that faculty of the soul which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike. - Joseph Addison
If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius. - Joseph Addison
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person. - Joseph Addison
From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life; where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor. - Joseph Addison
If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling. - Joseph Addison
Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable. - Joseph Addison
Our imagination loves to be filled with an object or to grasp at anything that is too big for it's capacity. We are flung into a pleasing astonishment at such unbounded views and feel a delightful stillness and amazement in the soul at the apprehension of them. - Joseph Addison
There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice. - Joseph Addison
Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man. - Joseph Addison
There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty. - Joseph Addison
If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius. - Joseph Addison
What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities. - Joseph Addison
Friendship improves hapiness and reduces misery, by doubting our joys and dividing our grief. - Joseph Addison
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable. - Joseph Addison
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. - Joseph Addison
Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another. - Joseph Addison
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. - Joseph Addison
Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency. - Joseph Addison
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures. - Joseph Addison
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for. - Joseph Addison
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. - Joseph Addison