A collection of quotes and thoughts by George Santayana on past, condemned, repeat, earth, reason, goodbye, meaning, fail, learn, aphorisms, hobbies and nature.
71 Insightful Quotes By George Santayana On Music, History, Life, Books And More
Quick Facts
Famous As:
Philosopher, Essayist, Poet, & Novelist
George Santayana was an illustrious essayist, philosopher, novelist and poet. Though he belonged to Spain, and was raised and educated in America since the age of eight. He held a valid Spanish passport, but identified himself as American. He wrote his essays, books, novels and poems in English and is distinguished as American ‘Man of Letters’. Popularly known for his thoughts, views and aphorisms, his writings, essays, quotes, thoughts and sayings are till date quoted extensively. Though he was an atheist, he valued Spanish Catholic beliefs, practices and values. He untimely left his job and moved to Europe, never to return. Here is a corpus of some notable quotes and thoughts by George Santayana on men, women, masterpieces, love, life, history, future, respect, war, dead, educated, act, dreams, school, child, patriotism, soul, knowledge, recognition, tyranny etc which have been excerpted from his poems, novels, writings, books, essays, work and life.
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
George Santayana
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.
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.
George Santayana
Memory... is an internal rumor.
George Santayana
Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.
George Santayana
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.
George Santayana
The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.
George Santayana
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
George Santayana
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
George Santayana
History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. . . . History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
George Santayana
The Platonic idealist is the man by nature so wedded to perfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the faultless ideal which the reality misses and suggests.
George Santayana
Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.
George Santayana
All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible
George Santayana
The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.
George Santayana
Criticism surprises the soul in the arms of convention.
George Santayana
All conditions are bearable, all dignities trumpery, and wisdom simply the gift of making the best of whatever is thrust upon us.
George Santayana
The wisest mind hath something yet to learn.
George Santayana
History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory
George Santayana
Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
George Santayana
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
George Santayana
The man who is not permitted to own is owned.
George Santayana
Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.
George Santayana
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.
George Santayana
We laughed at the same things, and we liked the same things. What more is needed for agreeable society?
George Santayana
Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
George Santayana
The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. Athletics don’t make anybody long-lived or useful.
The mass of mankind is divided into two classes, the Sancho Panzas who have a sense for reality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixotes with a sense for ideals, but mad.
George Santayana
The body must be loosely clad if the mind is to forget it and impetuously lead its own life.
To knock a thing down when it is cocked at an arrogant angle is a deep delight of the blood.
George Santayana
A man is morally free when...he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity
George Santayana
History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
George Santayana
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
