“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”
英语
“无论人被认为有多么自私，其天性中显然存在某些本能，使他关心他人的命运，并视他人的幸福为自身之必需，尽管他从中除了看到他人幸福时的愉悦之外一无所获。”
“The man of system is apt to be very wise in his own conceit, and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.”
英语
“体制之人往往自视甚高，常常沉醉于其理想政府方案的假想之美，以至于不容许丝毫偏离。他似乎以为自己能如同棋手摆弄棋子般轻松地安排一个大社会中的不同成员。”
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
英语
“我们的晚餐并非来自屠夫、酿酒师或面包师的善心，而是来自他们对自身利益的关切。”
“Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”
英语
“每个人都必然竭力使社会的年收入尽可能地增大。诚然，他通常既无意促进公共利益，也不知道自己在多大程度上促进了它。他所追求的仅仅是自己的利益，而在这一过程中，他被一只看不见的手引导去促进一个并非出自其本意的目标。”
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”
英语
“一个社会若其大部分成员贫困而悲惨，那这个社会就决不可能繁荣幸福。”
“The division of labour, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour.”
英语
“分工一旦被引入，便会在每一种技艺中带来劳动生产力的相应增长。”