Date: 1734
"How shall the Wheel of the Imagination that's continually in motion, be either stop'd or regulated?"
preview | full record— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)
Date: January 1739
"A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1741
"But to make use of the allusion of a celebrated French author, the judgment may be compared to a clock or watch, where the most ordinary machine is sufficient to tell the hours; but the most elaborate alone can point out the minutes and seconds, and distinguish the smallest differences of time."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1742
"Like many subordinate artists, employed to form the several wheels and springs of a machine: Such are those who excel in all the particular arts of life."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"They know, that a human body is a mighty complicated machine: That many secret powers lurk in it, which are altogether beyond our comprehension: That to us it must often appear very uncertain in its operations: And that therefore the irregular events, which outwardly discover themselves, can be ...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1749
"The former have explored and unravelled the labyrinth of Man. They alone have discovered to us those hidden springs concealed under a cover, which hides from us so many wonders."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Man is a machine so compound, that it is impossible to form at first a clear idea thereof, and consequently to define it. This is the reason, that all the enquiries the philosophers have made a priori, that is, by endeavouring to raise themselves on the wings of the understanding have proved ine...
preview | full record— 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...
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)