George Santayana Quotes

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one no less wise to balance it.
George Santayana
The truth is cruel but it can be loved and it makes free those who have loved it.
George Santayana
Before he sets out the traveller must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel. If he drifted aimlessly from country to country he would not travel but only wander ramble as a tramp. The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere so his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.
George Santayana
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past according to his interest in the present.
George Santayana
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.
George Santayana
Science is nothing but developed perception interpreted intent common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
George Santayana
If all the arts aspire to the condition of music all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
George Santayana
Work and love - these are the basics waking life is a dream controlled.
George Santayana
My atheism like that of Spinoza is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.
George Santayana
Each religion by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
George Santayana
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana
Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.
George Santayana
Progress far from consisting in change depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are content to repeat it.
George Santayana
Prayer among sane people has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.
George Santayana
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
George Santayana
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
George Santayana
Habit is stronger than reason.
George Santayana
By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.
George Santayana
My atheism like that of Spinoza is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.
George Santayana
Each religion by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
George Santayana
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana
Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.
George Santayana
Progress far from consisting in change depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are content to repeat it.
George Santayana
Prayer among sane people has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.
George Santayana
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
George Santayana
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
George Santayana
Habit is stronger than reason.
George Santayana
By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.
George Santayana
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
It is wisdom to believe the heart.
George Santayana
Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway.
George Santayana
Every real object must cease to be what it seemed and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.
George Santayana
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.
George Santayana
Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence.
George Santayana
It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility.
George Santayana
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.
George Santayana
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
Happiness is the only sanction in life where happiness fails existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
George Santayana
Happiness is the only sanction of life where happiness fails existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
George Santayana
I believe in the possibility of happiness if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions including optimism.
George Santayana
There is nothing sacred about convention there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.
George Santayana
Habit is stronger than reason.
George Santayana
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium of custom of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.
George Santayana
It is characteristic of spontaneous friendship to take on without enquiry and almost at first sight the unseen doings and unspoken sentiments of our friends the part known gives us evidence enough that the unknown part cannot be much amiss.
George Santayana
To cement a new friendship especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person and cut across the accidents of place and time.
George Santayana
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another people are friends in spots.
George Santayana
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
George Santayana
The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.
George Santayana
England is the paradise of individuality eccentricity heresy anomalies hobbies and humours.
George Santayana
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
George Santayana
Nothing you can lose by dying is half so precious as the readiness to die which is man's charter of nobility.
George Santayana
There is nothing to which men while they have food and drink cannot reconcile themselves.
George Santayana
Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.
George Santayana
The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
George Santayana