Date: 1802

"The brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile."

— Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges (1757-1808)

Date: w. 1761-2, rev. 1773-4, 1805

"J'abandonne mon esprit à tout son libertinage. Je le laisse maître de suivre la première idée sage ou folle qui se présente, comme on voit dans l'allée de Foy nos jeunes dissolus marcher sur les pas d'une courtisane à l'air éventé, au visage riant, à l'oeil vif, au nez retroussé, quitter celle-c...

— Diderot, Denis (1713-1784)

Date: 1900, 1901

"Between nature and ourselves, nay, between ourselves and our own consciousness a veil is interposed: a veil that is dense and opaque for the common herd,--thin, almost transparent, for the artist and the poet. What fairy wove that veil?"

— Bergson, Henri-Louis (1859-1941)

Date: 1900, 1901

"Deep in our souls we should hear the strains of our inner life’s unbroken melody,--a music that is ofttimes gay, but more frequently plaintive and always original."

— Bergson, Henri-Louis (1859-1941)

Date: 1900, 1901

"We move amidst generalities and symbols, as within a tilt-yard in which our force is effectively pitted against other forces; and fascinated by action, tempted by it, for our own good, on to the field it has selected, we live in a zone midway between things and ourselves, externally to things, e...

— Bergson, Henri-Louis (1859-1941)

Date: 1947, 1958

"Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited"

— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)

Date: 1947, 1958

"Turned back upon himself, secure within some imaginary inner fortress, he is the plaything of every hallucination, every spontaneous or deliberate ideological illusion."

— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)

Date: 1947, 1958

"Religion, ethics, metaphysics – these are merely the 'spiritual' and 'inner' festivals of human anguish, ways of channelling the black waters of anxiety – and towards what abyss?"

— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)

Date: 1952

De la partie la plus noire de mon âme, à travers la zone hachurée me monte ce désir d'être tout à coup blanc [Out of the blackest part of my soul, through the zone of hachures, surges up this desire to be suddenly white].

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)

Date: 1952

La structure néurotique d'un individu sear justement l'élaboration, la formation, l'éclosion dans le moi de noeuds conflictuels provenant d'une part du milieu, d'autre part de la façon toute personelle dont cet individu réagit à ces influences [The neurotic structure of an individual is precisely...

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)