Date: 1751, 1777

"No selfishness, and scarce any philosophy, have there force sufficient to support a total coolness and indifference; and he must be more or less than man, who kindles not in the common blaze."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"Another spring of our constitution, that brings a great addition of force to moral sentiment, is, the love of fame; which rules, with such uncontrolled authority, in all generous minds, and is often the grand object of all their designs and undertakings."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"I am convinced, that, where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"The one [reason] discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other [taste] has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"We may as well imagine, that minute wheels and springs, like those of a watch, give motion to a loaded wagon, as account for the origin of passion from such abstruse reflections."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"Who sees not that vengeance, from the force alone of passion, may be so eagerly pursued, as to make us knowingly neglect every consideration of ease, interest, or safety; and, like some vindictive animals, infuse our very souls into the wounds we give an enemy?"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"They [cruel ideas] still haunt his solitary hours, damp his most aspiring thoughts, and show him, even to himself, in the most contemptible and most odious colours imaginable."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"I suppose, if Cicero were now alive, it would be found difficult to fetter his moral sentiments by narrow systems; or persuade him, that no qualities were to be admitted as virtues, or acknowledged to be a part of personal merit, but what were recommended by The Whole Duty of Man."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1754, 1762

"While private resentment was boiling in his sullen, unsociable mind, he heard the nation resound with complaints against the duke; and he met with the remonstrance of the commons, in which his enemy was represented as the cause of every national grievance, and as the great enemy of the public."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1754, 1762

"So great was Charles’s aversion to violent and sanguinary measures, and so strong his affection to his native kingdom, that, it is probable, the contest in his breast would be nearly equal between these laudable passions, and his attachment to the hierarchy."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)