“Not all desired things are valuable, but rather only those which are worthy of being desired. Whether this worthiness belongs to a thing, however, is not in the particular case yielded from the investigation of the objective nature of the thing, but rather from the subjective consideration of the desire directed at the thing. From the examination of our own mental activity in the act of desire we discern whether this is directed at something valuable or not.”
Christian von Ehrenfels (1897, 3–4), as cited in: Robin Rollinger and Carlo Ierna, " Christian von Ehrenfels https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/ehrenfels/", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2016 Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
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Christian von Ehrenfels 6
Austrian philosopher 1859–1932Related quotes

Letter 2.
Advice to Young Men (1829)

Burke and the Edinburgh Phrenologists in The Atlas (15 February 1829); reprinted in New Writings by William Hazlitt, William Hazlitt and Percival Presland Howe (ed.), (2nd edition, 1925), p. 117; also reprinted in The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, Volume 20: Miscellaneous writings, (J.M. Dent and Sons, 1934), (AMS Press, 1967), p. 201

Bk I, Ch I
The Ethics Of Aristotle (Vol. I)

Letter (30 July 1947), p. 46
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

“It is a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.”
8
Moralia, Of the Training of Children

“All men desire peace, but very few desire those things that make for peace.”
Source: The Imitation of Christ
Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 137