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: 1749

The heart may bleed in sorrow

— Collins, William (1721-1759)

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)

Date: 1748, 1749

"'Tis thus the brain, that matrix, if I may use the expression, of the soul, is perverted after its manner, together with that of the body."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"The mind has, as well as the body, its epidemical and scorbutic disorders."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"By its flattering pencil the cold skeleton of abstract reason assumes living and vermillion flesh; but it the sciences flourish, arts are embellished, woods speak, echoes sigh, rocks weep, marble breathes, and all the inanimate bodies are suddenly inspired with life."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Besides what would the very best school avail without a matrix perfectly open for the entrance, or conception of ideas? It is as impossible to give a single idea or notion to a man, deprived of his senses, as it is to get a woman with child, to whom nature in a hurry has denied a womb; as I once...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)