It is worth noting that the offensive epithet "sentimentalist" has not long been a term of abuse: just two hundred years ago, when Schiller referred to himself and his poetry as "sentimental" (as opposed to Goethe's "naive" style), he had in mind the elegance of emotion, not saccharine sweetness and the manipulation of mawkish passions.

— Robert C. Solomon In Defense of Sentimentality (1990)

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