Word, Smith

Okay, so this is a very brief ”hullo” and a minor sweep with that dusting thingy so that this here blogspace will be presentable and suitable for more thoroughly thought through things later on.

While doing something completely else, I started leafing through Adam Smiths Theory of the moral sentiments and noticed that in that wonderful and almost lost art of describing your chapters in the index (surely there is a name for that?), Smith was a wonderful and somewhat quirky sort of master. Here are two of my favorites:

• Chapter III Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition to admire the rich and the great and to despise or neglect persons of poor or mean condition.
• Chapter 1 That though our sympathy with sorrow is generally a more lively sensation than our sympathy with joy, it commonly falls much more short of the violence of what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned.