Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.


George Santayana

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the f...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN
37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married.
JAMES C. DOBSON
It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN
The king may rule the kingdom, but it's the queen who moves the board.
D.M. TIMNEY
For starters, that’s a rather simple principle of Time Travel right there – and according to the...
CHRISTINA ENGELA
I am Happy and satisfied with what I am. 10000 will take me wrong, 1000 will go against me, 100 will...
NEHA KOTHARI
If our mind was an ocean then every now and then we would have the perfect storm happening in it.Gar...
GARY F EVANS...
Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY
I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER
Tomorrow is promised to no one. Prioritize today accordingly.
GINA GREENLEE
When I die it will be game over,... but I know one life is short, to be selfish is not the best deci...
DEYTH BANGER
You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I ...
SUFJAN STEVENS
It is a lie.
ARTHUR MILLER
The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a...
JEANETTE CORON
Unpredictability means what it means. I don't know how you define it. It is what it is.
MICHAEL KEATON
6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break:

1. Stop stressing
2. Stop worrying
3. Give re...
GERMANY KENT
I speak the truth. Not everyone who says they are ready to hear it really are.
MONIKA ZANDS
It is what it is, and it ain't nothin' else... Everything is clearly, openly, plainly delive...
DAN FLAVIN
With '10,000,' our aim was to make a film that was entertaining and a roller-coaster ride; i...
STEVEN STRAIT
Time is a teacher which in the end it kills all it's students. (Synchronicity 2015 Film)
DEYTH BANGER
Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C.
Cease to think of an impossibility and you will seize an opportunity for productivity. Excellence co...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR
Life is not all about sticking or stopping your thoughts to old memories but LIFE STARTS when you st...
NEHA KOTHARI
I'm not an Emontional, but how???
I live with the thought that "Nothing can be returned, it has...
DEYTH BANGER
Tell your story to the universe and Let your actions speak LOVE.' No matter what it is.
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO
I never like it when a celebrity goes on Twitter and says, 'This isn't true!' It is what...
HARRY STYLES
Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind....
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Rise up & attack the day with Passion. The struggle you're in today is developing the strength y...
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO
Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.
Things are the only hidden meaning ...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the...
MICHAEL HARRIS
I saw that there is no Nature,
That Nature doesn’t exist,
That there are hills, valleys,...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
A servant who serves excellently from his whole heart with due courage and humility is never a serva...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
You release the pain of the past and press on. It's a new day, and God is doing a new thing. He want...
CRAIG GROESCHEL
We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL
Frank held up the Chinese handcuffs. “Keep it simple.
RICK RIORDAN
Then that's what the Northern Lights are. All the lives that we're not living.
ADI ALSAID
Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
There was no Jace Wayland more real than the one he saw in her eyes when she looked at him.
CASSANDRA CLARE
You should never give up a happy middle in the hopes of a happy ending, because there is no such thi...
JOHN GREEN
Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON
We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kid...
KURT VONNEGUT
You get to the point where you're like, 'I'm just doing me, and if people don't like...
BEBE REXHA
I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.
ALBERTO CAEIRO
I have Tourettes and Aspergers, but Tourrets and Aspergers don't have me. You know, I'm doin...
JAMES DURBIN
Name the fears that are holding you back. It's the equivalent of flooding the boogeyman with light.
GINA GREENLEE
He had a harder time helping her out though. He was asleep while she was doing stars. Without wings,...
LAURIE FRANKEL
13. If you’re going through difficult times today, hold steady. It will change soon. If you are ex...
JAMES C. DOBSON
A strong personal philosophy does more than sustain us through the tragedies of life. It also stains...
CHRIS PRENTISS
The answers are never "out there." All the answers are "in there," inside you, waiting to be discove...
CHRIS PRENTISS
It ends or it doesn't.
That’s what you say. That’s
how you get through it.
The tu...
CAITLYN SIEHL
Time determines the occurrence of possibilities and impossibilities, but God determines the time for...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON
At the very moment when people underestimate you is when you can make a breakthrough.
GERMANY KENT
The best part of having a relationship is getting to call the person or lay down next to them and te...
TEGAN QUIN
Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things
in the now, not as they were or will be, or as ...
E.J. PATTEN
Move forward doesn´t mean avoiding the pain,
but look towards a new day in spite of the rain.
ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES
The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.
But what does someone who hates and love...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
I'll find you, don't worry. My body won't be with you all the time, but you'll always have my heart....
P.C. CAST
Everything known and referred to as “impossible” is often what has not been attempted before. It...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR
If you have a question, ask. How do you ask? Say it or write it
SOTONYE ANGA
The end is the matter! A step to the end is a factor!
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it
SARA SHEPARD
I was born subject like others to errors and defects,
But never to the error of wanting to unde...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
I take the good with the bad. I always wanted to be a comic, and part of that, for me, was that I wa...
ERIK GRIFFIN
It was frustrating to still be in the dark about something and be given only so little light.
LAUREN LOLA
See the world for what it is.
BEAUTIFUL!
ANTHONY T. HINCKS
Always Be Ready For Anything that Comes: Bananas, Chips, College, an Opportunity, so when it does yo...
DANIEL OJEDA
Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS
it's always important to do what you want, Life is too short to live with Regrets.
SHELLI THOMPSON
The fear of God is the only cure for the fear of people.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
This world is a joke, and I'm in it
OLIWAH GOUDEE
Wrong?
So you are saying, I'm wrong okay then... It's not possible every time to be right, one ...
DEYTH BANGER
Risks can lead to great victories or defeats. Even if you are defeated, the lesson will be valuable ...
LAILAH GIFTYAKITA
To be honest, there are no problems between me and Messi. People have their own opinions about who t...
CRISTIANO RONALDO
Your life today is the result of a series of decisions you made that have caused you to arrive where...
CHRIS PRENTISS
When you're recording to analog tape, it captures performance and you can't necessarily mani...
DAVE GROHL
In the journey of life, certain paths may seem to be leading nowhere because of a mountain or hill o...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
The love you get, is equal to the love you give.
BEN OAK
The value of routine; trusting your swing.
LORII MYERS
Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live a...
KILROY J. OLDSTER
I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It i...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
A big sacrifice is coming, and you won't have the courage to make it. That will cost you dearly. It ...
RICK RIORDAN
Not," Swift said firmly, "for all the tea in China."
"That expression has never made sense to m...
LISA KLEYPAS
While both these statements refer to eggs, the main difference between these two rather irking state...
CHRISTINA ENGELA
I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C.
I consider a dream like I consider a shadow,” answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected p...
ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
He turned to Frank who was trying to pull his fingers out of the Chinese handcuffs…
“Okay,�...
RICK RIORDAN
Make every day count... Even when you think it's the worst day of your life; for you never know when...
SOLANGE NICOLE
If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,
And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
The Madden Curse has really taken on a life of its own. People just love talking about it, and it is...
DREW BREES
Between what i see in a field and what I see in another field
There passes for a moment the fig...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
It’s an already inside outside,
The philosophers say it’s the soul
But it’s not the ...
ALBERTO CAEIRO
Do I believe a thing has limits!? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn’t have limits. Existence me...
ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
I'm probably the least harsh on myself, and I try not to scrutinize everything about my body. As...
KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN
Not everybody wants be texting their 15-year-old asking how his math tutor was. They would rather be...
RENEE JAMES
She parted her lips as though she were going to scold him, but, after a moment of sitting with her m...
KELSEY BRICKL
Maybe the secret to happiness is simplicity.
AMY HARMON
To search the sands of a lost desert for truth and justice in this world today you might as well be ...
GARY F EVANS...

More George Santayana

The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradicti...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past,...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Sanity is madness put to good use.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. when experience is not retained, ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Every actual animal is somewhat dull and somewhat mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare v...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved and it makes free those who have loved it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crim...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death on...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are fri...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live witho...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death sup...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The g...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another: people are frien...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subj...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Sanity is a madness put to good uses.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old ag...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflecti...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of th...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a v...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone f...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Man is as full of potential as he is of importance.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, an...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blo...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the bett...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot thr...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeab...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under w...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Boston is a moral and intellectual nursery always busy applying first principals to trifles.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to pres...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The empiricist... thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at s...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The highest form of vanity is love of fame.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Habit is stronger than reason.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute th...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without bene...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special se...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Oaths are the fossils of piety.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sens...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Nonsense is good only because common sense is so limited.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Depression is rage spread thin.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occu...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happi...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in t...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentabl...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of t...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience — the u...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another; people are frien...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the f...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, f...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited
GEORGE SANTAYANA
One real world is enough.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Progress, far from consisting of change, depends on retentiveness... Those who cannot remember the...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little long...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love wi...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Sanity is a madness put to good use.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Soul is the voice of the body's interests.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to it...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we th...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should de...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humo...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes som...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects i...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the anci...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recog...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most i...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing t...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval
GEORGE SANTAYANA
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the med...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The little word is has its tragedies: it marries and identifies different things with the greatest i...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved and it makes free those who love it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minute...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious that that they are true.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Life is not a spectacle or a feast: it is a predicament.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
If one is the master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time insight i...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
America is a young country with an old mentality.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judg...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentabl...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Life is not a spectacle or feast; it is a predicament.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there rem...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The young man who has not wept is a savage,
and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blo...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing with...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imagin...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are useless for self-preservation sho...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot thr...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The more pleasure a universe can yield, other things being equal, the more beneficent and generous i...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Consciousness is a born hermit.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
My atheism, like that of GEORGE SANTAYANA Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it mus...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
To understand one's self is the classic form of consolation; to delude one's self is the romantic.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Nothing you can lose by dying is half as precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of...
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA