The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.

Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it.

however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.

Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now,

Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others.

It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy.

Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.

Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another.

entering into the violence of his sorrow, we should scarce conceive the first movements of concern upon his account.