The Theory of Moral Sentiments

by Adam Smith

(a disease to which human nature, among its other calamities, is unhappily subject)

The harshest prescriptions of the great Physician of nature, the patient may, in the same manner, hope will contribute to his own health,

to his own final prosperity and happiness:

It consists in the proper distribution of rewards from the public stock of a community.

Pain,

might appear sometimes to be eligible; not, however, because it was pain, but because by enduring it we might either avoid a still greater pain,

Pain can be one of the great healers in life even when it hurts.

that our enjoyment chiefly arises either from the cheerful recollection of the past, or the still more joyous anticipation of the future,

that the mind always contributes by much the largest share of the entertainment.

of the nature of virtue in this amiable system, a system which has a peculiar tendency to nourish and support in the human heart the noblest and the most agreeable of all affections,

The mixture of a selfish motive, it is true, seems often to sully the beauty of those actions which ought to arise from a benevolent affection.

Selfish motives besmirch benevolent actions when blended together.

This is by no means the weak side of human nature, or the failing of which we are apt to be suspicious.

Selfish-minded principles are often hard to detect.

According to this system therefore, virtue consists not in any one affection, but in the proper degree of all the affections.

the merit of benevolence,

prudence,

when employed only in promoting private interest, can never even ...

The first is the love of virtue,

the noblest

the love of tru...

a passion inferior no doubt to the former, but which in dignity appears to...

and is most indifferent about what actually are the opinions of mankind with regard to him,

the consciousness that though he may neither be honoured nor applauded, he is still the proper object of honour and applause,

Though he despises the opinions

he has the highest value for those which ought to be entertained of him.

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he should put himself in their situation,

Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a selfish principle.

that my emotion is founded in self-love, because it arises from bringing your case home to myself, from putting myself in your situation,

A man may sympathize with a woman in child-bed; though it is impossible that he should conceive himself as suffering her pains in his own proper person

Reason

Principle of Approbation

the supreme magistrate.

The moment he loses his authority, all government is at an end.

to subject the consciences of men immediately to the civil,

not to the ecclesiastical powers, whose turbulence and ambition, he had been taught, by the example of his own times, to regard as the principal source of the disorders of society.

superstitious attachment to certain forms of expression, a weakness not very uncommon among the learned,

We should abominate him even more than the tyrant who might be goaded on by the strong passions of jealousy, fear, and resentment, and upon that account be more excusable.

and accordingly its general features are always more distinguishable than all the variations

In each of those three cases, the general passion of anger receives a different modification from the particular character of its object,

But still the general features of the passion predominate in all these cases.

Treachery and falsehood are vices so dangerous, so dreadful, and, at the same time, such as may so easily, and, upon many occasions, so safely be indulged, that we are more jealous of them than of almost any other.

The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires.

the instinct upon which is founded the faculty of speech, the characteristical faculty of human nature.