Happiness Wisdom from Adam Smith

Source: WealthPathfinder

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) ”Turgid Truth”

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires.

The slightest observation however might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situation may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with the passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice. Whenever prudence does not direct, whenever justice does not permit, the attempt to change our situation, the man who does attempt it, plays at the most unequal of al games of hazard, and stakes every thing against scarce any thing.