Date: 1748, 1754

"For if Virtue is something that deserves our Esteem and Love, then it must exist before Conscience is exerted, or gives its Testimony."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"At least we generally esteem [Neatness, Cleanliness, and Decency, to which we may add Dignity of Countenance, and Demeanour] Indications of an orderly, genteel, and well-governed Mind, conscious of inward Worth, or the Respect due to one's Nature."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"He will learn to transfer the Numbers of Poetry to the Harmony of the Mind, and of well-governed Passions."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"[W]ere the Mind entirely under the Direction of Sense, and impressible only by such Objects as are present, and strike some of the outward Organs, we should then be precisely in the State of the Brute-Creation, and be governed solely by Instinct or Appetite, and have no Power to controul whateve...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"Nature has therefore endued us with a MIDDLE FACULTY, wonderfully adapted to our MIXED State, which holds partly of Sense and partly of Reason, being strongly allied to the former, and the common Receptacle in which all the Notices that come from that quarter are treasured up, and yet greatly su...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1754

"The Mind is out of Frame, and feels an Agony proportioned to the Violence of the reigning Passion."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1748, 1750

"l'interêt est le plus grande monarque de la Terre" [Self-interest is the strongest monarch in the world]

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Date: 1749

Truely happy are "those who can / Govern that little empire, Man"

— Stepney, George (1663-1707)

Date: 1749

"but to me they [natural impressions of surprize and admiration] sensibly prov'd the power and full dominion of the sole passion of my heart over me, a passion in which soul and body were concenter'd, and left me no room for any other relish of life but love"

— Cleland, John (bap. 1710, d. 1789)

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)