“Love is an affection which carries the attention of the mind beyond itself, and is the sense of a relation to some fellow creature as to its object.”

—  Adam Ferguson , book An Essay on the History of Civil Society

PART I, SECTION II.
An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Love is an affection which carries the attention of the mind beyond itself, and is the sense of a relation to some fell…" by Adam Ferguson?
Adam Ferguson photo
Adam Ferguson 11
Scottish philosopher and historian 1723–1816

Related quotes

Joseph Brodsky photo

“The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.”

Joseph Brodsky book Watermark

Source: Watermark

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but that the relation relates itself to its own self.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

James Hamilton photo

“Jehovah is the Lord of the universe, and no responsible creature can feel itself in its right place except in cheerful loyalty to its Creator. And Jehovah is the Joy of the universe, and no intelligent being but must feel a great void in its affections, till once it love the Lord its God with all its strength and mind.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 610.

György Lukács photo

“Unmediated concepts … veil the relations between objects. … They are, therefore, objects of knowledge, but the object which is known through them is not the capitalist system of production itself, but the ideology of its ruling class.”

György Lukács book History and Class Consciousness

Source: History and Class Consciousness (1968), pp. 13-14

Henri Poincaré photo

“Now what is science? …it is before all a classification, a manner of bringing together facts which appearances separate, though they are bound together by some natural and hidden kinship. Science, in other words, is a system of relations. …it is in relations alone that objectivity must be sought. …it is relations alone which can be regarded as objective.
External objects… are really objects and not fleeting and fugitive appearances, because they are not only groups of sensations, but groups cemented by a constant bond. It is this bond, and this bond alone, which is the object in itself, and this bond is a relation.”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 11: Science and Reality

“The individual, before it can determine itself, is determined by the relations in which it is enmeshed. “It is a fellow-being before it is a being.””

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 34, quote is from Institut für Sozialforschung

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“The mind itself, its love [of itself] and its knowledge [of itself] are a kind of trinity.”

Aurelius Augustinus On the Trinity

(Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 4, Section 4, p. 27
On the Trinity (417)

Sydney Smith photo

“Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Sermon XII, Sermons (1809)

“Asceticism may offer a way of escape from the temptations that come from association with one's fellows and bring a sense of release and contentment. But the universal family can never be built by hermits. Contact may lead to contamination, but it is essential to redemption. Love never flees from the object of its affection. Where pain is most severe and sorrow most bitter, there love is most solicitous and untiring.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Jesus or Christianity: A Study in Contrasts (1929), p. 32

George Boole photo

“[Boole's apparent goal was to] unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 3: as cited in: John Cohen (1966) A new introduction to psychology. p. 121

Related topics