Date: January 1739

"An idea assented to feels different from a fictitious idea, that the fancy alone presents to us: and this different feeling I endeavour to explain by calling it a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"In short, the actions of the mind are, in this respect, the same with those of matter."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"For a like reason we feel a difficulty in mounting, and pass not without a kind of reluctance from the inferior to that which is situated above it; as if our ideas acquired a kind of gravity from their objects."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but a contrary impulse; and if this contrary impulse ever arises from reason, that latter faculty must have an original influence on the will, and must be able to cause, as well as hinder, any act of volition."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Those perceptions which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions; and, under this name, I comprehend all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1742

"Surely then no mistakes are ever committed in this affair; but every man, however dissolute and negligent, proceeds in the pursuit of happiness, with as unerring a motion, as that which the celestial bodies observe, when, conducted by the hand of the Almighty, they roll along the ethereal plains."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"And shall we esteem it worthy the labour of a philosopher to give us a true system of the planets, and adjust the position and order of those remote bodies; while we affect to overlook those, who, with so much success, delineate the parts of the mind, in which we are so intimately concerned?"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"Virtue, placed at such a distance, is like a fixed star, which, though to the eye of reason, it may appear as luminous as the sun in his meridian, is so infinitely removed, as to affect the senses, neither with light nor heat."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"Why do philosophers infer, with the greatest certainty, that the moon is kept in its orbit by the same force of gravity, that makes bodies fall near the surface of the earth, but because these effects are, upon computation, found similar and equal? And must not this argument bring as strong conv...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)