Date: 1748, 1777

"If they tell me, that they have mounted on the steps or by the gradual ascent of reason, and by drawing inferences from effects to causes, I still insist, that they have aided the ascent of reason by the wings of imagination; otherwise they could not thus change their manner of inference, and ar...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1754

"In general, the violent Sensations of Pain or Uneasiness which accompany Hunger, Thirst, and the other private Appetites, or too great Fatigue of Mind as well as of Body, prevent the Individual from running to great Excesses in the Exercise of the higher Functions of the Mind, as too intense Tho...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"And this Firmness of Mind answers to the Strength and Muscling of the Body."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"In this Light, the Administration itself, nay, every Act of it, becomes an Object of Affection, the Evil disappears, or is converted into a Balm which both heals and nourishes the Mind."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"If we attend to that Curiosity, or prodigious Thirst of Knowledge, which is natural to the Mind in every Period of its Progress, and consider withal the endless Round of Business and Care, and the various Hardships to which the Bulk of Mankind are chained down, it is evident, that in this presen...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"[I]t may be said of most Men, that their intellectual Organs are as much shut up and secluded from proper Nourishment and Exercise in that little Circle to which they are confined, as the bodily Organs are in the Womb."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: August 12, 1738, to Nov. 1, 1739 [1748]

"Therefore the Eyes of my Understanding are not yet open'd, but the Old Veil is still upon my Heart."

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: August 12, 1738, to Nov. 1, 1739 [1748]

"As to the Outward Manner You speak of, wherein most of them were affected who were cut to the Heart by the Sword of Spirit, no wonder that this was at first surprising to You, since they are indeed so very rare, that have been thus prick'd and wounded."

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Thus it is only a posteriori, or as it were by disentangling the soul from the organs of the body, that we can, I do not say, discover with evidence the nature of man, but obtain the greatest degree of probability the subject will admit of."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"In proportion as the motion of the blood grows calm, a soft soothing sense of peace and tranquility spreads itself over the whole machine; the soul finds itself sweetly weighed down with slumber, and sinks with the fibres of the brain: it becomes thus paralytic as it were, by degrees, together w...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)