George Santayana quotes - page 4

The living have never shown me how to live. (George Santayana)
Even the most inspired verse, which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal, becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic; the language it was written in dies, a learned education and an imaginative effort are requisite to catch even a vestige of its original force. Nothing is so irrevocable as mind. View quote
George Santayana
What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude : the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art . View quote
George Santayana
In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour. View quote
George Santayana
O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. View quote
George Santayana
The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape. View quote
George Santayana
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood. View quote
George Santayana
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. View quote
George Santayana
The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is a queen, infinitely fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice. View quote
George Santayana
The soul, too, has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit. View quote
George Santayana
Love makes us poets, and the approach of death should makes us philosophers. (George Santayana)
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books. View quote
George Santayana
In proportion as a man's interests become humane and his efforts rational, he appropriates and expands a common life, which reappears in all individuals who reach the same impersonal level of ideas. View quote
George Santayana
They [the wise spirits of antiquity in the first circle of Dante's Inferno] are condemned, Dante tells us, to no other penalty than to live in desire without hope, a fate appropriate to noble souls with a clear vision of life. View quote
George Santayana
To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say. View quote
George Santayana
Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are. View quote
George Santayana
Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited. View quote
George Santayana
Habit is stronger than reason. View quote
George Santayana
Depression is rage spread thin. View quote
George Santayana
Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men. View quote
George Santayana
To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography. (George Santayana)
There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor. View quote
George Santayana
Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end. View quote
George Santayana
To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world. View quote
George Santayana
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. View quote
George Santayana