Date: 1759

"There is, in the very feeling of those passions, something harsh, jarring, and convulsive, something that tears and distracts the breast, and is altogether destructive of that composure and tranquillity of mind which is so necessary to happiness, and which is best promoted by the contrary passio...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"They forget, for a time, their infirmities, and abandon themselves to those agreeable ideas and emotions to which they have long been strangers, but which, when the presence of so much happiness recalls them to their breast, take their place there, like old acquaintance, from whom they are sorry...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Our heart, as it adopts and beats time to his grief, so is it likewise animated with that spirit by which he endeavours to drive away or destroy the cause of it."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"To see the emotions of their hearts, in every respect, beat time to his own, in the violent and disagreeable passions, constitutes his sole consolation."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Our heart must adopt the principles of the agent, and go along with all the affections which influenced his conduct, before it can intirely sympathize with, and beat time to, the gratitude of the person who has been benefited by his actions."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1760

"A man this emptied and vacuated of self-conceit, these lines of natural pride, being blotted out, the soul is as a Tabula rasa, an unwritten table, to receive any impression of the law of God, that he pleases to put on it; and then his words are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to ...

— Binning, Hugh (1627-1653)

Date: 1761

"The great judge of the world, has, for the wisest reasons, thought proper to interpose, between the weak eye of reason, and the throne of his eternal justice, a degree of obscurity and darkness, which though it does not intirely cover the great tribunal from the view of mankind, yet renders the ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"But whatever may be the authority of this inferiour tribunal which is continually before their eyes, if at any time it should decide contrary to those principles and rules, which nature has established for regulating its judgments, men feel that they may appeal from this unjust decision, and cal...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"The applause of the whole world will avail but little if our own conscience condemn us; and the disapprobation of all mankind is not capable of oppressing us, when we are absolved by the tribunal within our own breast, and when our mind tells us that mankind are in the wrong."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"But though this tribunal within the breast be thus the supreme arbiter of all our action, though it can reverse the decisions of all mankind with regard to our character and conduct, and mortify us amidst the applause or support us under the censure of the world; yet, if we enquire into the orig...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)