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Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.

David Hume

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David Hume
Age: 65 †
Born: 1711
Born: April 26
Died: 1776
Died: August 25
Economist
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Historian
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Philosopher
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Edinburgh
Scotland
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Hume
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Entirely
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Eloquence

More quotes by David Hume

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While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.
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.. that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species.
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Your corn is ripe today mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow.
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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
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Nothing is more favorable to the rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighboring and independent states, connected together by commerce and policy.
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What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.
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God is an ever-present spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.
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Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.
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[priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.
David Hume
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Time is a perishable commodity.
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The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.
David Hume
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Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the Supreme Cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth: And if the former existence noways concerned us, neither will the latter.
David Hume
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Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.
David Hume
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When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?
David Hume
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Virtue, like wholesome food, is better than poisons, however corrected.
David Hume
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For the purposes of life and conduct, and society, a little good sense is surely better than all this genius, and a little good humour than this extreme sensibility.
David Hume
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It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
David Hume
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Anything that is conceivable is possible.
David Hume
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Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.
David Hume
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Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients action, pleasure and indolence. And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the disposition of the person, yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting without destroying in some measure the relish of the whole composition.
David Hume