Date: January 1739

"Nor is the empire of the will over our mind more intelligible ... We have command over our mind to a certain degree, but beyond that lose all empire over it: and it is evidently impossible to fix any precise bounds to our authority, where we consult not experience"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"BUT tho' this be the only reasonable account we can give of necessity, the contrary notion is so riveted in the mind from the principles above-mention'd, that I doubt not but my sentiments will be treated by many as extravagant and ridiculous."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"I have already observed, in examining the foundation of mathematics, that the imagination, when set into any train of thinking, is apt to continue even when its object fails it, and, like a galley put in motion by the oars, carries on its course without any new impulse."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The thought slides along the succession with equal facility, as if it consider'd only one object; and therefore confounds the succession with the identity."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: November, 1740

"The storms and tempests were not alone removed from nature; but those more furious tempests were unknown to human breasts."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: November, 1740

"The anatomist ought never to emulate the painter; nor in his accurate dissections and portraitures of the smaller parts of the human body, pretend to give his figures any graceful and engaging attitude or expression. There is even something hideous, or at least minute, in the views of thing...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1740

"But notwithstanding the empire of the imagination, there is a secret tie or union among particular ideas, which causes the mind to conjoin them more frequently together, and makes the one, upon its appearance, introduce the other."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1740

"Hence arises what we call the apropos of discourse: hence the connection of writing: and hence that thread, or chain of thought, which a man naturally supports even in the loosest reverie."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1740

"For as it is by means of thought only that any thing operates upon our passions, and as these are the only ties of our thoughts, they are really to us the cement of the universe, and all the operations of the mind must, in a great measure, depend on them."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)