Date: 1748, 1749
"And where is the wonder that the body when in health should be subservient, for how can it resist that torrent of blood, and all those spirits which are ready to force obedience, the will having for its ministers an invisible army of fluids, always ready to receive its orders, and as quick as li...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1751
"In fevers, the sudden failing of the strength and pulse ought, we are told, to be regarded by us as signs of the despairing soul's discontinuing her care of the body, and being soon about to relinquish it: nay, sometimes, like a mean and silly coward, she sinks even under such diseases, as, in t...
preview | full record— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)
Date: 1759
"This order of passions, according to this system, was of a more generous and noble nature than the other. They were considered upon many occasions as the auxiliaries of reason, to check and restrain the inferior and brutal appetites. We are often angry at ourselves, it was observed, we often bec...
preview | full record— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)
Date: 1760-1761, 1762
"Reason guides the bands of either host, nor can it subdue one passion but by the assistance of another."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1764
"For when the hostile army rushes in at the windows of the body, and certain battalions of perturbations have so entered the castle of the mind, that the soul is taken captive, as it were, and oppressed beyond measure, sure, by troops of affections proceeding from the senses of seeing, hearing, s...
preview | full record— Anonymous
Date: 1774
"By means of it, these ideas, like a well-disciplined army, fall, of their own accord, into rank and order, and divide themselves into different classes according to their different relations."
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: 1774
"As in madness, the senses, from struggling with the imagination, are at length forced to submit, so, in sleep, they seem for a while soothed into the like submission: the smallest violence exerted upon any one of them, however, rouzes all the rest in their mutual defence; and the imagination, th...
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1777
"But it is their nature never to observe a neutrality; they are either rebels or auxiliaries, and an enemy subdued is an ally obtained."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1786
"From that awful period, almost every expectation is forlorn: the heart is left unguarded: its great protector is no more: the vices therefore, which so long encompassed it in vain, obtain an easy victory: in crouds they pour into the defenceless avenues, and take possession of the soul: there is...
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)
Date: 1787
"Again, when some desires retire, there are others akin to them, which grow up, and through inattention to the father's instructions, become both many and powerful, draw towards intimacies among themselves, and generate a multitude, seize the citadel or the soul of the youth, finding it evacuated...
preview | full record— Adams, John (1735-1826)