George Santayana quotes - page 9

The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence. (George Santayana)
Our character ... is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be. View quote
George Santayana
There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves. View quote
George Santayana
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. View quote
George Santayana
Reason and happiness are like other flowers -- they wither when plucked. View quote
George Santayana
Man is as full of potential as he is of importance. View quote
George Santayana
The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder. View quote
George Santayana
Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy. View quote
George Santayana
Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained. View quote
George Santayana
Columbus found a world, and had no chart save one that Faith deciphered in the skies. View quote
George Santayana
History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.... What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion. (George Santayana)
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure. View quote
George Santayana
The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. View quote
George Santayana
The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything. View quote
George Santayana
The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality. View quote
George Santayana
Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection must rest on circumstantial evidence. View quote
George Santayana
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. View quote
George Santayana
Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any. View quote
George Santayana
Nothing is so irrevocable as mind. View quote
George Santayana
There is no right government except good government. View quote
George Santayana
There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with. (George Santayana)
Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience the union of life and peace. View quote
George Santayana
Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves. View quote
George Santayana
The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form. View quote
George Santayana
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences. View quote
George Santayana