George Santayana quotes - page 5

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what. (George Santayana)
For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep. View quote
George Santayana
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality. View quote
George Santayana
The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it. View quote
George Santayana
The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns. View quote
George Santayana
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted. View quote
George Santayana
A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world. View quote
George Santayana
The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise. View quote
George Santayana
The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal. View quote
George Santayana
The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character. View quote
George Santayana
The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. (George Santayana)
It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well. View quote
George Santayana
Oaths are the fossils of piety. View quote
George Santayana
The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age. View quote
George Santayana
That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject. View quote
George Santayana
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig. View quote
George Santayana
The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings. View quote
George Santayana
A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. View quote
George Santayana
Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel. View quote
George Santayana
For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. View quote
George Santayana
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)
Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them. View quote
George Santayana
Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up. View quote
George Santayana
It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases. View quote
George Santayana
The Soul is the voice of the body's interests. View quote
George Santayana