page 6 of 59     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1748, 1777

"But a late Philosopher has taught us, by the most convincing Arguments, that Morality is nothing in the abstract Nature of Things, but is entirely relative to the Sentiment or mental Taste of each particular Being; in the same Manner as the Distinctions of sweet and bitter, hot and cold, arise f...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"In our more serious thinking or discourse, this is so observable, that any particular thought, which breaks in upon the regular tract or chain of ideas, is immediately remarked and rejected."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvenience, that, though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices, it may only serve, by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more determined re...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"Nothing is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas, furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"It [the imagination] can feign a train of events, with all the appearance of reality, ascribe to them a particular time and place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every circumstance, that belongs to any historical fact, which it believes with the greatest certainty."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"This impression of my senses immediately conveys my thought to the person, together with all the surrounding objects. I paint them out to myself as existing at present, with the same qualities and relations, of which I formerly knew them possessed."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"Our mental vision or conception of ideas is nothing but a revelation made to us by our Maker."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"Inference and reasoning concerning the operations of nature would, from that moment, be at an end; and the memory and senses remain the only canals, by which the knowledge of any real existence could possibly have access to the mind."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"They know, that a human body is a mighty complicated machine: That many secret powers lurk in it, which are altogether beyond our comprehension: That to us it must often appear very uncertain in its operations: And that therefore the irregular events, which outwardly discover themselves, can be ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748, 1777

"As nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves, by which they are actuated; so has she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; thoug...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.