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Every movement of the theater by a skilful poet is communicated, as it were, by magic, to the spectators who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions which actuate the several personages of the drama.

David Hume

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David Hume
Age: 65 †
Born: 1711
Born: April 26
Died: 1776
Died: August 25
Economist
Essayist
Historian
Librarian
Philosopher
Writer
Edinburgh
Scotland
David Home
Hume
Variety
Communicated
Drama
Tremble
Theater
Resent
Poet
Spectators
Magic
Weep
Movement
Rejoice
Personages
Passion
Passions
Inflamed
Every
Several
Skilful

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But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science.
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It is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint and airs and apparel which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections.
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The law always limits every power it gives.
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Nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting.
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Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.
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.. the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.
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The free conversation of a friend is what I would prefer to any environment.
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I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.
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Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being, whose existence is demonstrable.
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Such a superiority do the pursuits of literature possess above every other occupation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that excel the most in the common and vulgar professions.
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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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The sceptics assert, though absurdly, that the origin of all religious worship was derived from the utility of inanimate objects,as the sun and moon, to the support and well-being of mankind.
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I know with certainty, that [an honest man] is not to put his hand into the fire, and hold it there, till it be consumed: And thisevent, I think I can foretell with the same assurance, as that, if he throw himself out at the window, and meet with no obstruction, he will not remain a moment suspended in the air.
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It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause.
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That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion.
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Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.
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Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.
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Nothing more powerfully excites any affection than to conceal some part of its object, by throwing it into a kind of shade, whichat the same time that it shows enough to prepossess us in favour of the object, leaves still some work for the imagination.
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Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.
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Liberty is a blessing so inestimable, that, wherever there appears any probability of recovering it, a nation may willingly run many hazards, and ought not even to repine at the greatest effusion of blood or dissipation of treasure.
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