Beauty is no quality in things themselves. It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.
– David Hume
Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
– David Hume
Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
– David Hume
He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance.
– David Hume
It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
– David Hume
Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.
– David Hume
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
– David Hume
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
– David Hume
The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.
– David Hume
Art may make a suit of clothes: but nature must produce a man.
– David Hume
Custom is the great guide of human life.
– David Hume
Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
– David Hume
This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.
– David Hume
There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.
– David Hume
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
– David Hume
The law always limits every power it gives.
– David Hume
The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.
– David Hume
The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
– David Hume
The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.
– David Hume
Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.
– David Hume
Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
– David Hume
Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.
– David Hume
Men often act knowingly against their interest.
– David Hume
Human Nature is the only science of man and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.
– David Hume
Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.
– David Hume
Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous those in philosophy only ridiculous.
– David Hume
Every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches.
– David Hume
Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.
– David Hume
Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.
– David Hume
Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.
– David Hume
Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.
– David Hume
A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
– David Hume
A propensity to hope and joy is real riches one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
– David Hume
A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.