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George Santayana Quotes and Quotations


To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood.
- George Santayana | Action Quotes
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him.
- George Santayana | Aging and Old Age Quotes
Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. 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.
- George Santayana | Aging and Old Age Quotes
Boston is a moral and intellectual nursery always busy applying first principles to trifles.
- George Santayana | America and Americans Quotes
If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them.
- George Santayana | Art and the Artist Quotes
An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
- George Santayana | Art and the Artist Quotes
Art is a delayed echo.
- George Santayana | Art and the Artist Quotes
The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.
- George Santayana | Civilization Quotes
There is nothing sacred about convention; there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims; but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.
- George Santayana | Habit and Tradition Quotes
Habit is stronger than reason.
- George Santayana | Habit and Tradition Quotes
There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
- George Santayana | Cynicism Quotes
Nothing you can lose by dying is half so precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of nobility.
- George Santayana | Death and Dying Quotes
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
- George Santayana | Education Quotes
England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies and humours.
- George Santayana | England and the U.K. Quotes
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another; people are friends in spots.
- George Santayana | Friends and Friendship Quotes
Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.
- George Santayana | Goodness and Giving Quotes
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.
- George Santayana | Government and Rule Quotes
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
- George Santayana | Happiness Quotes
I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism.
- George Santayana | Happiness Quotes
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
- George Santayana | Happiness Quotes
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana | History and Historians Quotes
It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility.
- George Santayana | Homo Sapiens Quotes
Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence.
- George Santayana | Homo Sapiens Quotes
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.
- George Santayana | Ideas Quotes
Every real object must cease to be what it seemed and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.
- George Santayana | Illusion Quotes
There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana | Life Quotes
By nature's kindly disposition, most questions which it is beyond man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.
- George Santayana | Nature Quotes
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
- George Santayana | Passion and the Heart Quotes
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
- George Santayana | Poets and Poetry Quotes
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are content to repeat it.
- George Santayana | Progress Quotes
Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
- George Santayana | Religion Quotes
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.
- George Santayana | Religion Quotes
Work and love - these are the basics; waking life is a dream controlled.
- George Santayana | Sanity and Insanity Quotes
If all the arts aspire to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
- George Santayana | Science and Technology Quotes
If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.
- George Santayana | Self and Self-Knowledge Quotes
Before he sets out, the traveller must possess fixed interests and facilities, to be served by travel. If he drifted aimlessly from country to country he would not travel but only wander, ramble as a tramp. The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere so his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.
- George Santayana | Travel and Travellers Quotes
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved and it makes free those who have loved it.
- George Santayana | Truth Quotes
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
- George Santayana | Wisdom Quotes
Happiness is the only sanction in life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
- George Santayana | Happiness Quotes
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana | Happiness Quotes
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
- George Santayana | Happiness Quotes
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana | Acceptance Quotes
The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.
- George Santayana | Forgiveness Quotes
Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.
- George Santayana | Helping Other People Quotes
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
- George Santayana | Friendship Quotes
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another; people are friends in spots.
- George Santayana | Friendship Quotes
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 | Friendship Quotes
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 | Friendship Quotes
Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.
- George Santayana | Prayer Quotes
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana | Simplicity Quotes
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana | Simplicity Quotes
Habit is stronger than reason.
- George Santayana | One Day Quotes
A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.
- George Santayana | The Past Quotes
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana | The Past Quotes
In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.
- George Santayana | Change Quotes
Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway.
- George Santayana | Instincts Quotes
It is wisdom to believe the heart.
- George Santayana | Instincts Quotes
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
- George Santayana | Realistic Expectations Quotes
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
- George Santayana | Realistic Expectations Quotes
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana | Goals Quotes
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
- George Santayana | Adversity Quotes
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.
- George Santayana | Beauty Quotes
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana | Lighten up Quotes
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana | Past Quotes
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out, and minutely articulated.
- George Santayana | Science Quotes


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