David Hume Quotes: 11

• A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.

• Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

  Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays

• Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

  A Treatise of Human Nature

• No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.

  Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul

• Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

• In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

• It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause

• Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

  A Treatise of Human Nature

• Stercus accidit.

• 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.

  The Natural History of Religion

• Indulge your passion for science…but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding