How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness

He’s saying that we want to be seen as having integrity, honesty, good principles.

Behaving with propriety is the ability to conform to the expectations of those around us, and they in turn conform to our expectations.

Love locally, trade globally.

Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.

Yes, you are profoundly self-interested. But for some reason, you do not always act in what appears to be your self-interest.

By justice, Smith means the virtue of not injuring or harming others. By prudence, Smith means the virtue of taking care of oneself using both foresight—looking down the road to assess the consequences of our action—and self-control, the ability to give up something today in return for a greater gain in the future:

Those general rules can mute our self-interested passions and give our conscience a fighting chance against our self-love. We see people choosing a path of behavior, and we notice how that behavior is judged by others. If it is judged negatively, that encourages us to avoid it. If it is judged positively, we are encouraged to engage in that action

economics is the study of how to get the most out of life.

Smith believes that our desire for approval from those around us is embedded within us, and that our moral sense comes from experiencing approval and disapproval from others. As we experience those responses, we come to imagine an impartial spectator judging us.