Date: 1748, 1777

"The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvenience, that, though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices, it may only serve, by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more determined re...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Nothing is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas, furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Inference and reasoning concerning the operations of nature would, from that moment, be at an end; and the memory and senses remain the only canals, by which the knowledge of any real existence could possibly have access to the mind."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"But may we not hope, that philosophy, cultivated with care, and encouraged by the attention of the public, may carry its researches still farther, and discover, at least in some degree, the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations?"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Restore either of them that sense in which he is deficient; by opening this new inlet for his sensations, you also open an inlet for the ideas; and he finds no difficulty in conceiving these objects."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"This variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind, which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imag...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"And if the case be the same with the other relations or principles of associations, this may be established as a general law, which takes place in all the operations of the mind."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748

"His soul was fair, / Bright as the children of yon azure sheen!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"O who can speak the vigorous joys of health! / Unclogg'd the body, unobscured the mind."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"Let godlike reason, from her sovereign throne, / Speak the commanding word 'I will!' and it is done."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)