Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.

She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.

Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.