Date: 1664

"I should like you to consider, after this, all the functions I have ascribed to this machine -- such as the digestion of food, the beating of the heart and arteries, the nourishment and growth of the limbs, respiration, waking and sleeping, the reception by the external sense organs of light, so...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1665

"The passions are the only orators who always convince"

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"In the human heart new passions are for ever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"Condemned men sometimes affect a steadfastness and indifference to death which is really only fear of looking death in the face; thus it can be said that this steadfastness and indifference do for their spirit what the bandage does for their eyes."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"Discernment is simply a great light of the intellect which shines into the roots of things, sees everything worth noticing, and perceives things thought to be imperceptible."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"The sicknesses of the soul have their ups and downs like those of the body; what we take to be a cure is most often merely a respite or change of disease."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"Defects in the soul are like wounds in the body: whatever care is taken to heal them the scars always show"

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"There is no passion in which love of self rules so despotically as love, and we are always more inclined to sacrifice the loved one's tranquillity than to lose our own."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"Youth is one long intoxication; it is reason in a fever."

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)

Date: 1665

"Absence lessens moderate passions and intensifies great ones, as the wind blows out a candle but fans up a fire"

— La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de (1613-1680)