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)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Wit contracts rust amongst those that have none."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"These are the animals, that resemble man the most; for we observe likewise amongst them the same gradual analogy, in relation to the callous body, in which Lancisi had placed the seat of the Soul, before the late Monsieur de la Peyronnie, who has illustrated this opinion with a variety of experi...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Words, languages, laws, sciences, and the liberal arts were introduced in time, and by them the rough diamond of our understanding was polished."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"These are the methods, as far as I comprehend, that have filled the brain with ideas, for the reception of which nature has formed it."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"But as the structure of this organ is such, that when once the eye formed for vision has received the pictures of objects, the brain cannot help seeing their images and differences: in the same manner when the signs of these differences are marked or ingraved in the brain, the soul must necessar...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"All this knowledge therefore, the vanity of which puffs up the giddy brain of our supercilious pedants, is nothing but a vast heap of words and figures, which form in the head the traces by which we distinguish and remember objects."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"I always use the word imagine, because I am of the opinion that everything is imagined, and that all the parts of the soul may be justly reduced to the imagination only, which forms them all; and thus the judgment, reason, and memory are not absolute faculties of the soul, but real modifications...

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1748, 1749

"By its flattering pencil the cold skeleton of abstract reason assumes living and vermillion flesh; but it the sciences flourish, arts are embellished, woods speak, echoes sigh, rocks weep, marble breathes, and all the inanimate bodies are suddenly inspired with life."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)