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The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best-chosen word


George Santayana

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Society is not an empirical fact, definite and observable; it is a fancy, a dream with which men hav...
EMILE DURKHEIM It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But t...
OSCAR WILDE It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But t...
OSCAR WILDE Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an id...
ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an id...
ARNOLD TOYNBEE Sometimes it's best to trade an ideal for something more practical that you can guarantee.
A.J. DARKHOLME It would be an ideal location for the LIFE Program.
LORI DOYLE Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than the freedom to s...
ADLAI E. STEVENSON The moral and social aspiration proper to American life is, of course, the aspiration vaguely descri...
HERBERT CROLY I can't imagine a more ideal life.
AL JARREAU There is nothing more important than the children and the youth of our community and it's an ideal s...
DAVE STEPHENSON When strictly looking at dollars, the bottom line is that it will be more advantageous for us to kee...
GARY CLAY In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA The great attraction of fashion is that it diverted attention from the insoluble problems of beauty ...
THEODORE ZELDIN Social democracy does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past.
TONY JUDT One of the most important things you could actually do in life is to create the best of yourself, to...
SUNDAY ADELAJA The best way to make a living is to share how you live your Ideal Life.
LORRIN L. LEE The earth has its music for those who will listen
REGINALD VINCENT HOLMES The ideal husband understands every word his wife doesn’t say.
ALFRED HITCHCOCK Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
HERBERT ASQUITH Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
HERBERT HENRY ASQUITH An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband
BOOTH TARKINGTON An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband.
BOOTH TARKINGTON Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to a purpo...
HOWARD THURMAN Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve centre of his consent to a purpose...
HOWARD THURMAN The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, the best of circumstances.
JOSEPH ADDISON The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist...
VICTOR HUGO Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really...
OSCAR WILDE A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. ...
OSCAR WILDE Repeat a lie a hundred times and it becomes an ideal.
LJUPKA CVETANOVA Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the poss...
BERTRAND RUSSELL It may be impossible for some consumers to find the ideal plan -- and it will certainly be time-cons...
JACK HOADLEY The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
ARISTOTLE First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary mean...
ARISTOTLE It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I ...
NELSON MANDELA An ideal relation should be lighter than air and thicker than blood.
IFTIKHAR SHAHID The lyrics are more conceptual than anything. They're not particularly about a person. They're just ...
LISA MARIE PRESLEY The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoi...
FRIEDRICH DURRENMATT It may be that that we can sing what we often cannot say, whether it be from shyness, fear, lack of ...
RICHARD RODGERS Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unp...
JOHANN VON GOETHE Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unp...
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unp...
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE The ideal gymnast would be between 4 feet 7 and 5-2. I wouldn't be able to pinpoint an ideal hei...
BELA KAROLYI I prefer to LIVE my Ideal Life rather than focus on making a living.
LORRIN L. LEE One of the things I say is from an evolutionary point of view: probably the ideal rich environment f...
ALISON GOPNIK I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in ha...
NELSON MANDELA I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable,...
GERTRUDE STEIN Love is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing. A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes ...
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE It is an ideal coalition treaty.
WOLFGANG THIERSE It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS PERE It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service
ALBERT EINSTEIN In an ideal world, you'd never have to do things that are below your position, but this isn'...
SOPHIA AMORUSO The ideal mother, like the ideal marriage, is a fiction.
MILTON R. SAPIRSTEIN We are all but slaves to an ideal
ELYMOR JAN B. HERNANDEZ The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances."...
ARISTOTLE I got to 285-290 (pounds) my junior year, ... That is when I hit my ideal weight. I was quicker, str...
MARCUS GREEN Be true to the best you know. This is your high ideal. If you do your best, you cannot do more.
H. W. DRESSES I shall ask no more than that you agree with Dean Inge that even though counting heads is not an ide...
LEARNED HAND Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships ...
IRWIN SARASON Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships ...
GEORGE SANTAYANA For inner peace, one must accept gracefully his short coming,self committed mistake & the self criti...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
Just as vul...
OSCAR WILDE The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is...
OSCAR WILDE It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to ca...
BENJAMIN E. MAYS I think that the district would be well-advised to do a little bit more legwork to make sure they fu...
ANNE BROWN When I was a young man I vowed never to marry until I found the ideal woman. Well, I found her -- b...
ROBERT SCHUMAN Coupled with our desire for the ideal, therefore, we must have an equally strong desire for the rema...
CHRISTIAN D. LARSON I notice that most people WORK HARD so they can afford to live their Ideal Life. I just skip the 'wo...
LORRIN L. LEE It's only when an artist becomes a master that they are fully able to express themselves.
CAROLINA KOSTNER When I say we've had an ideal marriage, I'm not just talking about physical attraction, which I can ...
BETTY FORD I have been to Guantanamo. It's a model prison. Is it ideal? No. But we live in a very un-ideal ...
PETER T. KING But the thing uttered by the speaker I strain towards is still not quite the story of what is going ...
SEAMUS HEANEY Somehow when I express my voice, I feel that much more vulnerable. For instance, if I used the wrong...
CARRIE ANN INABA Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
IMMANUEL KANT Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination
IMMANUEL KANT The parking spot may not be in your ideal location, but most of the time there are spots.
JOSEPH RUBERTONE There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of a...
PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to it...
GEORGE SANTAYANA It's not ideal ? from the footy side of things, it could certainly be better,
GREG MILLER Our friends believed in us and in what I was doing. Perhaps they looked at us as some sort of an ide...
GEORGE WEIN It seems like an ideal situation to have actors record together but it's not.
CARLOS SALDANHA Notice how fast the weeks go by. That's how fast your life will go. If you are not living your ideal...
LORRIN L. LEE Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is co...
OSCAR WILDE 0 is an ideal number.
KIMTO OCHE EMMANUEL Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.
VICTOR HUGO He who is infatuated with 'Man' leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation ext...
MAX STIRNER Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. The conviction of the rich...
MARK TWAIN Supreme serenity still remains the Ideal of great Art. The shapes and transitory forms of life are b...
FRANZ LISZT The struggle to live up to an “ideal image” of who we should be in order to feel safe misdirects...
HENNA INAM When we think of the ideal, we do not add virtue to virtue, but think of Jesus Christ, so that the s...
E. STANLEY JONES I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold u...
GEORGE MACDONALD This is in no way an ideal solution to implement, but it does address the problem of overcrowding.
DEAN TISTADT I have a picture of an ideal consciousness.
HENRY FLYNT Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state
THOMAS DE QUINCEY Doing so gives the rest of the taxpayers confidence that the system has integrity and accountability...
HARVEY BENNETT When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination.
ELLEN KEY Our hope is that our mix of measures, though far from ideal, would accomplish more for Chinese citiz...
ELLIOT SCHRAGE This may not be an ideal situation, but Eli still has had the other parts of the preseason to prepar...
AMANI TOOMER It was the ideal venue.
ATHAN CRIST

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