“The human body is a machine which winds its own springs.”

Man a Machine (1747)

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Do you have more details about the quote "The human body is a machine which winds its own springs." by Julien Offray de La Mettrie?
Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo
Julien Offray de La Mettrie 42
French physician and philosopher 1709–1751

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“O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

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Source: Ode to the West Wind (1819)
Context: Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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“Good rain is coming to our delight.
Its early-spring timing is perfectly right.
With wind it drifts in all through the night.
Silently it's drenching everything in sight.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Welcome Rain in a Spring Night" (《春夜喜雨》), as translated by Ying Sun http://www.musicated.com/syh/tangpoems.htm (2008)

“Human generations are like leaves in their seasons.
The wind blows them to the ground, but the tree
Sprouts new ones when spring comes again.
Men too. Their generations come and go.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

Book VI, lines 149–152; Glaucus to Diomedes.
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“The end of the republic is to enervate and to weaken all other bodies so as to increase its own body.”

Book 2, Ch. 3 (translation by Mansfield and Tarcov)
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