1863-1952, American Philosopher, Poet
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
George Santayana – [Liberty]
If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.
George Santayana – [Pain]
In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality. The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral.
George Santayana – [Memory]
Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.
George Santayana – [Intolerance]
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
George Santayana – [Advantage]
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
George Santayana – [Saints]
It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.
George Santayana – [America]
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
George Santayana – [Unhappiness]
Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
George Santayana – [Knowledge]
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana – [Happiness]
Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.
George Santayana – [Inferiority]
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
George Santayana – [Life and Living]
Man is as full of potential as he is of importance.
George Santayana – [Potential]
Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.
George Santayana – [Possessions]
Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.
George Santayana – [Superstition]
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
George Santayana – [Music]
Nonsense is good only because common sense is so limited.
George Santayana – [Nonsense]
Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.
George Santayana – [Life, Lust For]
Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.
George Santayana – [Sacrifice]
Oaths are the fossils of piety.
George Santayana – [Swearing]
| Quotations 21 to 40 of 87 | First | < Previous | Next > | Last |