Famous quotes containing the word contrary:
“I borrowed today out of the Advocate’s Library, David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, but found it so abstruse, so contrary to sound sense and reason, and so drearying its effects on the mind, if it had any, that I resolved to return it without reading it.
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—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian, or person wholly unknown to me. It is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice; a man’s resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)