Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow.
David HumeRead
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Beauty is subjective and depends on individual perception rather than inherent qualities.
David Hume's quote emphasizes that beauty is not an objective property of objects, but rather a perception shaped by the observer's mind. This suggests that different individuals will find beauty in different places, influenced by their unique experiences and perspectives, making beauty a deeply personal and varied experience.
Themes
BeautyPerceptionSubjectivityMindPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about art, one might quote this to illustrate how different people interpret the same painting in diverse ways.
More from David Hume
All quotes βEloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
David HumeRead
All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.
David HumeRead
The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness
David HumeRead
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
David HumeRead
To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.
David HumeRead
Similar quotes
All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.
Eugene H. PetersonRead
As I look back upon my life, I see that every part of it was a preparation for the next. The most trivial of incidents fits into the larger pattern like a mosaic in a preconceived design.
Margaret SangerRead
My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.
James JoyceRead
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
Thomas B. MacaulayRead
The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelve-month between the ingross-ing a bill & passing it: that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word: and that if circum-stances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare majority.
Thomas JeffersonRead
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.
Aldo LeopoldRead