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

"For if it does not entirely sleep, how little does it want of it? Since it is impossible for her to recollect one object, to which she gave attention, amidst that innumerable crowd of confused ideas, which as so many vanishing clouds had filled up, if I may so say, the atmosphere of the brain."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"The human body is a machine that winds up its own springs: it is a living image of the perpetual motion."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Without proper food the soul languishes, raves, and dies with faintness. It is like a taper, which revives in the moment it is going to be extinguished."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"We think not, nay, we are not honest men, but as we are chearful, or brave; all depends on the manner of winding up the machine."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"A person would be tempted to think, at certain times, that the soul is lodged in the stomach, and that Van Helmont in placing it in the pylorus, is not deceived but by taking a part for the whole."

— 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

"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."

— 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)