Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found.
I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.
The free conversation of a friend is what I would prefer to any environment.
The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.
God is an ever-present spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.
There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
Nothing exists without a cause, the original cause of this universe we call God.
.. the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.
To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.
A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to religion
Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
Uncommon expressions are a disfigurement rather than an embellishment of discourse.
What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary.
Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.
That the sun shines tomorrow is a judgement that is as true as the contrary judgement.
Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure and indolence.
Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
Luxury is a word of uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as in a bad sense
Of all sciences there is none where first appearances are more deceitful than in politics.
Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.
Absolute monarchy,... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution.
Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.
Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.
Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude.
A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
It is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behavior, by my experience of past events.
Mankind are always found prodigal both of blood and treasure in the maintenance of public justice.
The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.
Poets themselves, tho' liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions.
Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.
No truth appears to me more evident than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as men.
It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.
When we reflect on the shortness and uncertainty of life, how despicable seem all our pursuits of happiness.
The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.
The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.
Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.
Apart from the representational content of an idea there is another component: its force and vivacity, its impetus.
Nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting.
The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.
But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.
[A persons] utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.