Quotes from David Hume

Let us consider what we call vicious luxury. No gratification, however sensual, can of itself be esteemed vicious. A gratification is only vicious when it engrosses all a man's expense, and leaves no ability for such acts of duty and generosity as are required by his situation and fortune. The same care and toil that raise a dish of peas at Christmas would give bread to a whole family during six months.

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.

Men often act knowingly against their interest.

Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel.

Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions.

Beauty in things lies in the mind which contemplates them.

Avarice, the spur of industry.

The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

The law always limits every power it gives.

Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.

Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.

This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.

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.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.

Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.

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.

Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.

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.

Opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a-quarreling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

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.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell deadborn from the press.

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.

Human Nature is the only science of man and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.