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Sentimentality ... is not an escape from reality or responsibility, but, quite to the contrary, provides the precondition for ethical engagement rather than an obstacle to it.

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

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More quotes by Robert C. Solomon

The prejudice against sentimentality, I want to argue, is ill-founded and in fact is an extension of that all-too-familiar contempt for the passions in Western literature and philosophy.

In Defense of Sentimentality (1990)

It is simply not true, as more than one great cynic has claimed, that sentimentality betrays cynicism. It is rather that sentimentality betrays the cynic, for it is the cynic and not the sentimentalist who cannot abide honest emotion.

In Defense of Sentimentality (1990)

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.

In Defense of Sentimentality (1990)

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