Joseph Addison Quotes About Pleasure

Quotes about: Pleasure

• 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.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Happiness, Men

  Joseph Addison (1793). “A Collection of Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments”, p.336

• One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Positive, Happiness

• Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

  Joseph Addison

  Life, Ideas, Giving

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steel (1840). “Selections from the Spectator: Embracing the Most Interesting Papers by Addison, Steel, and Others”, p.273

• 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

  Thinking, Imperfection, Soul

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.112

• Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied; like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.

  Joseph Addison

  Age, Looks, Pieces

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1855). “The Spectator”, p.446

• The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.

  Joseph Addison

  Friendship, League, Vices

  Joseph Addison (1854). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.201

• A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.

  Joseph Addison

  Book, Men, Black

  'The Spectator' no. 1, 1 March 1711

• Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

  Joseph Addison

  Love, Life, Pain

  Joseph Addison (1811). “The Works of the Right Honorable Joseph Addison”, p.283

• Oh, Liberty! thou goddess heavenly bright!
  Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
  Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
  And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train.

  Joseph Addison

  Freedom, Liberty, Delight

  Joseph Addison, H. Baldwin (imp.) (1779). “The Works of the English Poets”, p.44

• Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries. A marriage of love is pleasant; a marriage of interest, easy; and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.

  Joseph Addison

  Sweet, Love Is, Happy Marriage

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steel (1858). “The Spectator”, p.324

• There is noting truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure.

  Joseph Addison

  Pain, Real, Noble

• Most of the trades, professions, and ways of living among mankind, take their original either from the love of the pleasure, or the fear of want. The former, when it becomes too violent, degenerates into luxury, and the latter into avarice.

  Joseph Addison

  Work, Luxury, Way

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.65

• The moral virtues, without religion are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.

  Joseph Addison

  Ideas, Soul, Sublime

• I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.

  Joseph Addison

  Gentleman, Quality, World

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.173

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

  Joseph Addison

  Happiness, Success, Men

  Joseph Addison (1794). “Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments: Tending to Amuse the Fancy, and Inculcate Morality”, p.159

• Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate in.

  Joseph Addison

  Circles, Religion, Enough

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1855). “The Spectator”, p.60

• True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.

  Joseph Addison

  Giving, Mind, Religion

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