"If we consider all the different passions of human nature, we shall find that they are regarded as decent, or indecent, just in proportion as mankind are more or less disposed to sympathize with them."
"The sense of merit seems to be a compounded sentiment, a direct sympathy with the sentiments of the agents, and an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of those who receive the benefit of his actions."
"We can never survey our own sentiments unless we remove ourselves from our own natural station. We examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it."
"This utility bestows upon them, undoubtedly a new beauty, ... however it is by no means the quality which first recommends such actions to the natural sentiments of the bulk of mankind."
"The principles of the imagination may easily be altered by habit and education: but the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation, though they may be warped, cannot be entirely perverted."
"No man ever trod steadily in the paths of prudence, of justice, or of proper beneficence, whose conduct was not principally directed by a regard to the sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator."
"They are all of them in some measure in the right. But as many of them are derived from a partial and imperfect view of nature, there are many of them too in some respects in the wrong."
