Life & Wisdom Quote by Joseph Addison

Addison lands the jab with that lightly powdered 18th-century elegance: a sentence that reads like manners and bites like diagnosis. The phrasing turns on “in general” and “suddenly.” He’s not condemning friendship as such; he’s indicting the way polite society manufactures it. If bonds are “contracted” quickly - a business verb, chilly and transactional - then of course they’re “dissolved” with equal speed. The logic is almost mathematical, and that’s the point: what passes for intimacy in a crowded social world is often just convenience wearing a friendly face.

The subtext is moral as much as social. Addison, a key voice in the essay culture of The Spectator, wrote for a rising urban public learning how to behave in coffeehouses, salons, and political circles where reputation was currency. Sudden friendship is less a meeting of souls than a performance: alliances formed to signal taste, gain access, secure introductions. The quote warns that when friendship begins as social acceleration, it ends as social friction - one slight, one shift in fashion, one change in fortune, and the “contract” is void.

What makes it work is the controlled cynicism. Addison doesn’t rant; he shrugs, and the shrug sharpens the critique. By presenting dissolving friendships as “no wonder,” he normalizes the failure just enough to expose it: a society that treats connection as disposable will keep mistaking speed for depth, and surprise for sincerity.