“ Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of things. ”
George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty (1896). copy citation
| Author | George Santayana |
|---|---|
| Source | The Sense of Beauty |
| Topic | beauty pleasure |
| Date | 1896 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26842/26842-h/26842-h.htm |
Context
“But in all the intermediate realm of vulgar day, where mechanical science has made progress, the inclusion of emotional or passionate elements in the concept of the reality would be now an extravagance. Here our idea of things is composed exclusively of perceptual elements, of the ideas of form and of motion.
The beauty of objects, however, forms an exception to this rule. Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of things. But we are now prepared to understand the nature of this exception. It is the survival of a tendency originally universal to make every effect of a thing upon us a constituent of its conceived nature.”
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