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  ...is objective and free from self-consciousness; it sees the self in a general medium and measures it by a general law. Even the tenderer associations of home might, under other circumstances, attach to other objects. Consensus of opinion has a distorting effect, sometimes, on ideal values. A thing which almost everyone agrees in prizing, because it has played some part in every life, tends to be valued above more important elements in personal happiness that may not have been shared. So Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.   The family might well be, to some extent, a similar idol of the tribe. Everyone has had a father and a mother; but how many have had a friend? Everyone likes to remember many a joy and even sorrow of his youth which was linked with family occasions; but to name a man's more private memories, attached to special surroundings, would awaken no response in other minds. Yet these other surroundings may have been no less stimulating to emotion, and if familiar to all might be spoken of with as...   Santayana, George

Excerpt from The Life of Reason · This quote is about worth · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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