Date: 1759

"He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our o...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"They are upon these occasions commonly cited as the ultimate foundations of what is just and unjust in human conduct; and this circumstance seems to have misled several very eminent authors, to draw up their systems in such a manner, as if they had supposed that the original judgments of mankind...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The first turn of mind has at least all the beauty which can belong to the most perfect machine that was ever invented for promoting the most agreeable purpose: and the second all the deformity of the most aukward and clumsy contrivance."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"He might perceive a beauty of this kind in prudence, temperance and good conduct, and a deformity in the opposite behaviour: He might view his own temper and character with that sort of satisfaction with which we consider a well contrived machine, in the one case; or with that sort of distaste a...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Of their own accord they put us in mind of one another, and the attention glides easily along them."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"His mind is continually occupied with what is too grand and solemn, to leave any room for the impressions of those frivolous objects, which fill up the attention of the dissipated and the gay."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The abstinence from pleasure, becomes less necessary, and the mind is more at liberty to unbend itself, and to indulge its natural inclinations in all those particular respects."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Justice, the last and greatest of the four cardinal virtues, took place, according to this system, when each of those three faculties of the mind, confined itself to it's proper office, without attempting to encroach upon that of any other; when reason directed and passion obeyed, and when each ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The consciousness, or even the suspicion of having done wrong, is a load upon every mind, and is accompanied with anxiety and terror in all those who are not hardened by long habits of iniquity."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)