Date: 1742

" But what supreme joy in the victories over vice as well as misery, when, by virtuous example or wise exhortation, our fellow-creatures are taught to govern their passions, reform their vices, and subdue their worst enemies, which inhabit within their own bosoms?"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1744

"The Preservation of Life, the defending the human Body from Decay, and of rendering it a fit Tenement for the Soul to inhabit, in that Season in which she is most capable of exerting her noblest Faculties, are grave and ferious Subjects; with which no trivial Matters ought to mingle."

— Campbell, John (1708-75)

Date: 1745

"The body is but the house; the soul is the tenant that inhabits it; the body is the instrument; the soul the artist that directs it."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Chaced from the open country, these robbers [i.e., superstitions] fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"You afterwards become so enamoured of this offspring of your brain, that you imagine it impossible, but he must produce something greater and more perfect than the present scene of things, which is so full of ill and disorder."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1754

"And indeed the Practice of it is generally its own Reward; by expelling from the Mind the most dreadful Intruders upon its Repose, those rancorous Passions which are begot and nursed by Resentment, and by disarming and even subduing every Enemy one has, except such as have nothing left of Men bu...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"These Objects, or the Images of them, passing in review before the Mind, do, by a necessary Law of our Nature, call forth another and nobler Set of Affections, as Admiration, Esteem, Love, Honour, Gratitude, Benevolence, and others of the like Tribe."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"If reason is the slave of depraved, or distracted sense, how then can it be expected, that at that time it should be governor?"

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"And where is the wonder that the body when in health should be subservient, for how can it resist that torrent of blood, and all those spirits which are ready to force obedience, the will having for its ministers an invisible army of fluids, always ready to receive its orders, and as quick as li...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: Saturday, September 15, 1750

"The first effect of this meditation is, that it furnishes a new employment for the mind, and engages the passions on remoter objects; as kings have sometimes freed themselves from a subject too haughty to be governed and too powerful to be crushed, by posting him in a distant province, till his ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)