Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.
Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.
It's stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.
You've gotta be very careful that grace and politeness do not merge into a banality of behavior, where we're just nice, sort of 'death by cupcake.'
Happy the country that lives on nothing but its wits; cursed be the one that thinks it can get rich by planting or digging or drilling for wealth.
The job of art is to chase ugliness away.
I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.
The great moments of rock 'n' roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.
I always think if you are asking somebody for something it is a good idea to give them something first.
As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It's the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.
God is so big. It's a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we're small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.
It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.