"Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other."

Beauty

Create & Download Quote Image

Select Template

Optimized for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Insight & Reflection

The theme of beauty is universal, yet David Hume manages to capture its essence in a uniquely profound way. Taking a moment to internalize this can shift our mindset, reminding us that our perspective on beauty often shapes our reality.

About David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist who is known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Following John Locke, Hume rejected the existence of innate ideas, holding that all our ideas derive ultimately from impressions, but in his fork he distinguished relations of ideas, known a priori, from matters of fact, whose knowledge rests on experience. This places him in the empiricist tradition of Locke and George Berkeley, while drawing his experimental method from Francis Bacon.

More quotes by David Hume →
Editorial Note: This quote is curated and fact-checked by the Quotes Archive Editorial Team. Verified Literature Specialist.

More by David Hume

"A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century."

Read more →

"Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence."

Read more →

"A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century."

Read more →

More about Beauty

"I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, 'Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.'"

Read more →

"Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined."

Read more →
View all Beauty quotes →