Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Volume 1

Front Cover
A. Strahan, and T. Cadell, 1792 - 1687 pages
 

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 133 - O ! who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast?
Page 479 - In thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood : he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice : his children — but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.
Page 483 - Though it may be true, therefore, that every individual, in his own breast, naturally prefers himself to all mankind, yet he dares not look mankind in the face, and avow that he acts according to this principle. He feels that in this preference they can never go along with him, and that how natural soever it may be to him, it must always appear excessive and extravagant to them.
Page 442 - ... this idle way of reading and considering things. By this means, time even in solitude is happily got rid of, without the pain of attention : neither is any part of it more put to the account of idleness, one can scarce forbear saying, is spent with less thought, than great part of that which is spent in reading.
Page 263 - Rome, therefore, it was regarded as the mark of a good citizen never to despair of the fortunes of the republic, so the good citizen of the world, whatever may be the political aspect of his own times, will never despair of the fortunes of the human race, but will act upon the conviction, that...
Page 223 - He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences ; a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put together ; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion.
Page 76 - That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.
Page 281 - With all th' embroidery plaster'd at thy tail ? They might (were Harpax not too wise to spend) Give Harpax self the blessing of a friend ; Or find some doctor that would save the life Of wretched Shylock, spite of Shylock's wife ; But thousands die, without or this or that, Die, and endow a college, or a cat.
Page 482 - Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care ; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.
Page 530 - But, going over the theory of virtue in one's thoughts, talking well, and drawing fine pictures of it, this is so far from necessarily or certainly conducing to form a habit of it in him who thus employs himself, that it may harden the mind in a contrary course, and render it gradually more insensible, ie form a habit of insensibility to all moral considerations.

Bibliographic information