David Hume Quotes About Pleasure

Quotes about: Pleasure

• Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure and indolence.

  David Hume

  Happiness, Feelings, Three

  David Hume (1825). “Essays and treatises on several subjects: essays, moral, political and literary”, p.266

• 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

  Happiness, Different, Three

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.746, Delphi Classics

• Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgement; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure. No man reasons concerning another's beauty; but frequently concerning the justice or injustice of his actions.

  David Hume

  Passion, Men, Giving

  David Hume (2016). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book”, p.131, VM eBooks

• Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.

  David Hume

  Pain, Pleasure

  David Hume (1825). “Essays and treatises on several subjects: essays, moral, political and literary”, p.3

• Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel.

  David Hume

  Giving, Quality, Opinion

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.206

• For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.

  David Hume

  Pain, Light, Self

  1739 A Treatise of Human Nature, bk.1, pt.4, section 6.

• Riches are valuable at all times, and to all men, because they always purchase pleasures such as men are accustomed to and desire; nor can anything restrain or regulate the love of money but a sense of honor and virtue, which, if it be not nearly equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.

  David Hume

  Men, Honor, Age

  David Hume (1809). “Essays and treatises on several subjects in two volumes: Essays, moral, political, and literacy”, p.293

• Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.

  David Hume

  Powerful, Sorrow, Influence

  David Hume (1875). “Essays Moral, Political, and Literary”, p.263

• Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behavior.

  David Hume

  Real, Philosophical, Vices

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.245

• If we confine ourselves to a general and distant reflection on the ills of human life, that can have no effect to prepare us for them. If by close and intense meditation we render them present and intimate to us, that is the true secret for poisoning all our pleasures, and rendering us perpetually miserable.

  David Hume

  Life, Death, Reflection

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.683, Delphi Classics

• Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.

  David Hume

  Anticipation, Pleasure

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Illustrated”, p.405, eKitap Projesi

• Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.

  David Hume

  War, Loss, Luxury

  David Hume (1751). “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals”, p.30

• Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

  David Hume

  Ocean, Gay, Thinking

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.4068, Delphi Classics

• If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.

  David Hume

  Weed, Art, Revenge

  David Hume (1817). “Philosophical Essays: On Morals, Literature, and Politics”, p.166

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