Date: January 1739
"Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action where its courage...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: January 1739
"Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: January 1739
"We speak not strictly and philosophically, when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: January 1739
"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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1739
"Those gifts for nobler purposes assign'd, / To raise the thoughts, and moralize the mind; / The chaste delights of virtues to inspire, / And warm the bosom with seraphic fire; / Sublime the passions, lend devotion wings, / And celebrate the first great cause of things."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1739
"Ye happy minds, that free from mortal chains, / Possess the realms where boundless pleasure reigns, / That feel the force of those immortal fires, / And reach the bliss, to which my soul aspires."
preview | full record— Rowe [née Singer], Elizabeth (1674-1737)
Date: January 1739
"And as an image necessarily resembles its object, must not the frequent placing of these resembling perceptions in the chain of thought, convey the imagination more easily from one link to another, and make the whole seem like the continuance of one object?"
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: January 1739
"Pity, then, is related to benevolence, and malice to anger; and as benevolence has been already found to be connected with love, by a natural and original quality, and anger with hatred, it is by this chain the passions of pity and malice are connected with love and hatred."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)