Date: 1748, 1749
"In the fair sex, the soul adapts itself to the delicacy of constitution: thence flow that tenderness, that affection, those lively sentiments founded rather upon passion than reason; and in fine, those prejudices and superstitions whose impression is so hard to be effaced."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Hurried with incessant rapidity by the vortex of blood and animal spirits, one undulation makes an impression, which is immediately effaced by another; the soul pursues it, but often in vain: she must wait to bewail the loss of what she did not quickly lay hold of; and thus it is that the imagin...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"There is, say they, a law of nature, a knowledge of right and wrong deeply imprinted on the mind of man, which, in other animals, is not perceived."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Since there are evident commmunications betwixt the mother and the infant, and it is almost impossible to deny the facts produced by Tulpius and other authors of equal credit with him, we will therefore believe that it is by the same means that the foetus feels the force of the mother's imaginat...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1762
"Après avoir ainsi, de l’impression des objets sensibles & du sentiment intérieur qui me porte à juger des causes selon mes lumières naturelles, déduit les principales vérités qu’il m’importoit de connaître, il me reste a chercher que, es maximes j’en dois tirer pour ma conduite, & quelles règles...
preview | full record— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)
Date: 1762
"Plus tard, la substance est durcie, & les nouvelles empreintes ne marquent plus. Jeune homme, recevez dans votre âme, encore flexible, le cachet de la vérité."
preview | full record— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)
Date: January 1762
"Sans cet art, mon âme se pliant avec peine à des biais chimériques, l’illusion ne serait que momentanée et l’impression faible et passagère. [Without this art, my mind would easily take to the paths of fantasy, there would be only a fleeting illusion and a faint, passing impression.]"
preview | full record— Diderot, Denis (1713-1784)