David Hume
Such is the nature of novelty that where anything pleases it becomes doubly agreeable if new; but if it displeases, it is doubly displeasing on that very account.Collection: Novelty
The fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravityCollection: Law
All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard.Collection: Determination
Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass.Collection: Imagination
Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.Collection: Understanding
Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needsbe delightful and rejoicing.Collection: Eye
The forming of general maxims from particular observation is a very nice operation; and nothing is more usual, from haste or a narrowness of mind, which sees not on all sides, than to commit mistakes in this particular.Collection: Mistake
Self-denial is a monkish virtue.Collection: Self
The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.Collection: Lazy
How could politics be a science, if laws and forms of government had not a uniform influence upon society? Where would be the foundation of morals, if particular characters had no certain or determinate power to produce particular sentiments, and if these sentiments had no constant operation on actions?Collection: Character
From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.Collection: Causes
What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.Collection: Perfect
Truth is disputable, not human taste.Collection: Taste
The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.Collection: Words Of Wisdom
Nothing more powerfully excites any affection than to conceal some part of its object, by throwing it into a kind of shade, whichat the same time that it shows enough to prepossess us in favour of the object, leaves still some work for the imagination.Collection: Passion
To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.Collection: Stupidity
When I shall be dead, the principles of which I am composed will still perform their part in the universe, and will be equally useful in the grand fabric, as when they composed this individual creature. The difference to the whole will be no greater betwixt my being in a chamber and in the open air. The one change is of more importance to me than the other; but not more so to the universe.Collection: Air
Delicacy of taste has the same effect as delicacy of passion; it enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and our misery.Collection: Passion
Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm.Collection: Ignorance
I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.Collection: God
We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable.Collection: Secret
Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.Collection: Ties
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.Collection: Philosophy
The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.Collection: Age
Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.Collection: Liberty
The bigotry of theologians is a malady which seems almost incurable.Collection: Theologian
Friendship is a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reason and cemented by habit; springing from long acquaintance and mutual obligations, without jealousies or fears, and without those feverish fits of heat and cold, which cause such an agreeable torment in the amorous passion.Collection: Friendship
Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.Collection: Art
Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.Collection: Expectations
God is an ever-present spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.Collection: Faith
Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.Collection: Enemy
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.Collection: Pain
Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.Collection: Pain
In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame, because the materials are always prepared for it.Collection: Men
I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilization of their complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation.Collection: Race
The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happinessCollection: Ends
The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.Collection: Weed
Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.Collection: Philosophy
The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.Collection: Religious
All ills spring from some vice, either in ourselves or others; and even many of our diseases proceed from the same origin. Remove the vices; and the ills follow. You must only take care to remove all the vices. If you remove part, you may render the matter worse. By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and an indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men's charity or their generosity.Collection: Spring
All the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and...however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties.Collection: Running
What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?Collection: Mankind
Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.Collection: Human Nature
But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science.Collection: Liberty
As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning it origin in human nature.Collection: Two
A delicacy of taste is favorable to love and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and making us indifferent to the company and conversation of the greater part of men.Collection: Men
All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.Collection: Ignorance
The religious hypothesis, therefore, must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe: but no just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact, and alter or add to the phenomena, in any single particular.Collection: Religious
The whole of natural theologyresolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous proposition, That the cause or causesof order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.Collection: Simple