David Hume Quotes

Men are satisfied commonly if they can so regulate their lives as to escape the censure of men, and the disgrace which follows wicked actions.

To have done no man a wrong...to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude-this is to be a man.

May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.

People's perception changes so fast. You win, and people say, 'Well, he had all of those sanctions at USC, and that's why he lost.' You lose, and, 'OK, he's a bad head coach, and he's just a good play-caller wherever he has been.'

If one acts rightly and honestly, it is difficult to decide whether it is the effect of integrity or skill.

I wish to live without committing any fault at any time.

Therefore it is most expedient for the wise, if Don Worm (his conscience) find no impediment to the contrary, to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as I am to myself.

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public.

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

Take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice.

Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no persuasion move thee, to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollity; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.

The superior man does what is proper to the station in which he is; he does not desire to go beyond this.

No one has lived a short life who has performed its duties with unblemished character.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

Just laws are no restraint upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires nothing which a just law will interfere with.

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue.

Living virtuously is equal to living in accordance with one's experience of the actual course of nature

Seek virtue and of that posest, to Providence resign the rest.

...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.