Quotation added by staff

Why not add this quote to your bookmarks?

  ...satisfaction, would be as remote as possible from goodness: to call it good is mere disloyalty to morals, brought about by some fantastic or dialectical passion. In excellence there is an essential bias, an opposition to the possible opposite; this bias expresses a mechanical impulse, a situation that has stirred the senses and the will. Impulse makes value possible; and the value becomes actual when the impulse issues in processes that give it satisfaction and have a conscious worth. Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.   [D]
That thought is nature's concomitant expression or entelechy, never one of her instruments, is a truth long ago divined by the more judicious thinkers, like Aristotle and Spinoza; but it has not met with general acceptance or even consideration. It is obstructed by superficial empiricism, which associates the better-known aspects of events directly together, without considering what mechanical bonds may secretly unite them; it is obstructed also by the traditional mythical...   Santayana, George

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

• Biography
• 3 Fans
• This quote in blogs