Date: 1704-5; 1731
"Most men seem to place it in being allowed to let loose the Reins to all their Appetites and Passions without controul; to be under no restraint either from the Laws of Men, or from the Fear of God."
preview | full record— Clarke, Samuel (1675-1729)
Date: 1732
"But the free-thinker, with a vigorous flight of thought, breaks through those airy springes, and asserts his original independency."
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: 1732
"He that wants the proper materials of thought, may think and meditate for ever to no purpose: those cobwebs spun by scholars out of their own brains being alike unserviceable, either for use or ornament."
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: 1733
"I own it is much easier to confute than establish, and I should not be very Sanguin about the Non-existence of animal Spirits, but that I have observ'd the dwelling so much upon them, has led Physicians too much to neglect the mending Juices, the opening Obstructions, and the strengthening the S...
preview | full record— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)
Date: 1741
"I Might give another plain Simile to confirm the Truth of this [mnemonic method]. What Horse or Carriage can take up and bear away all the various, rude and unweildy Loppings of a branchy Tree at once? But if they are divided yet further so as to be laid close, and bound up in a more uniform Man...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1745
"Why should you study to conceal or excuse it, and fondly cherish that viper in your bosom?"
preview | full record— Mason, John (1706-1763)
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...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Man is a machine so compound, that it is impossible to form at first a clear idea thereof, and consequently to define it. This is the reason, that all the enquiries the philosophers have made a priori, that is, by endeavouring to raise themselves on the wings of the understanding have proved ine...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Like that bird on yonder spray, the imagination seems to be perpetually ready to take wing."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"It is ridiculous to exclaim against the dominion of the will. For one order which it gives, a hundred times does it come under the yoke."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)