Quality:
Quality is the essential character of a particular thing or phenomenon, making it what it is and distinguishing it from other things and phenomena. Quality is the totality of properties that makes a particular thing what it is. Quality is the inseparable specific mark of a thing. It is inseparable because without it the thing ceases to exist as that given thing.
Quality (what kind) and quantity (how much) are the two general categories of dialectics used by Marx and Engels to describe the process of change.
The philosophical concept of quality differs from the notion of “quality” in everyday life, where it is associated with the worth or value of things. People speak of the good or bad quality of food, clothing, shoes, or artistic production.
The philosophic concept of quality contains no element of moral or value judgment.
Qualitative change:
For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).
[I]t is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e., without quantitative alteration of the body concerned.
(F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1883.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm
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