Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. Spectator, no. 256 (London, December 24, 1711).)

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

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. Syphax, in Cato, act 2, sc. 5 (1713), Works of Addison, ed. R. Hurd (1883).)

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. Spectator (London, May 24, 1711), no. 73, The Spectator, ed. D.F. Bond (1965).)

Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. Spectator (London, Oct. 11, 1712), no. 507, The Spectator, ed. D.F. Bond (1965).)

If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. Spectator (London, Sept. 26, 1712), no. 494, The Spectator, ed. D.F. Bond (1965).)

Our disputants put me in mind of the scuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible.

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. Spectator (London, Sept. 5, 1712), no. 476, The Spectator, ed. D.F. Bond (1965).)

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.

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. Spectator (London, May 17, 1712), no. 381, The Spectator, ed. D.F. Bond (1965).)

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to an human soul.

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. Spectator (London, Nov. 6, 1711), no. 215, The Spectator, ed. D.F. Bond (1965).)

Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. repr. In Works of Addison, ed. R. Hurd (1883). The Campaign, l. 292 (1705).)

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

(Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist. "The Cruelty of Parental Tyranny," Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments (1794).)