The theory of moral sentiments: By Adam Smith, ...

ingredient, and there is often the highest de|gree of absurdity and impropriety in very harmless and insignificant actions. Deliberate actions, of a pernicious tendency to those we live with, have, besides their impropriety, a peculiar quality of their own by which they appear to deserve, not only disapprobation, but punishment; and to be the objects, not of dislike merely, but of resentment and re|venge: and none of those systems easily and sufficiently accounts for that superior degree of detestation which we feel for such actions.