To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.
—George Santayana
Topics: Words
There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all had to be. Why, if we are not vain or snobbish, need we desire that it should have been different? The better things we missed may yet be enjoyed or attained by someone else somewhere: why isn’t that just as good? And there is no regret, either, in the sense of wishing the past to return, or missing it: it is quite real enough as it is, there at its own date and place
—George Santayana
Topics: The Past
Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.
—George Santayana
Topics: Sanity
It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior.
—George Santayana
Topics: War
Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.
—George Santayana
Topics: Intelligence
To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.
—George Santayana
Topics: Patriotism
There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
—George Santayana
Topics: Skepticism, Doubt
Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.
—George Santayana
Topics: Emotions
Every actual animal is somewhat dull and somewhat mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly when he might well act, while at other times he will run off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to no purpose. These imperfections are so human that we should hardly recognise ourselves if we could shake them off altogether. Not to retain any dulness would mean to possess untiring attention and universal interests, thus realising the boast about deeming nothing human alien to us; while to be absolutely without folly would involve perfect self-knowledge and self-control. The intelligent man known to history flourishes within a dullard and holds a lunatic in leash. He is encased in a protective shell of ignorance and insensibility which keeps him from being exhausted and confused by this too complicated world; but that integument blinds him at the same time to many of his nearest and highest interests. He is amused by the antics of the brute dreaming within his breast; he gloats on his passionate reveries, an amusement which sometimes costs him very dear. Thus the best human intelligence is still decidely barbarous; it fights in heavy armour and keeps a fool at court.
—George Santayana
Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid.
—George Santayana
Topics: Philosophy
If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.
—George Santayana
Topics: Pain
Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome.
—George Santayana
Topics: Inferiority
The highest form of vanity is love of fame.
—George Santayana
Topics: Fame, Vanity
The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy.
—George Santayana
I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
—George Santayana
Topics: Facts
The degree in which a poet’s imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity
—George Santayana
Topics: Reality
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
Topics: Friendship
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
Topics: Friendship
Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.
—George Santayana
Topics: Superstition
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
—George Santayana
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Luck, Living, Life
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
Topics: Memory
The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.
—George Santayana
Topics: Pride
There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.
—George Santayana
Topics: Sympathy
It is wisdom to believe the heart.
—George Santayana
Topics: Instincts
The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence
—George Santayana
Topics: Admiration, Confidence
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
—George Santayana
Topics: Experiment, Happiness
It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to.
—George Santayana
Topics: Virtue, Passion
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
—George Santayana
Topics: Science
Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
—George Santayana
Topics: Worth
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
—George Santayana
Topics: War
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Bahya ibn Paquda Jewish Philosopher
- Miguel de Unamuno Spanish Philosopher, Writer
- Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
- Jacinto Benavente Spanish Dramatist
- Lope de Vega Spanish Playwright
- John Dewey American Philosopher
- William James American Philosopher
- Miguel de Cervantes Spanish Novelist
- Pablo Picasso Spanish Painter
- Will Durant American Historian
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