Quotes

“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.” George Santayana

“A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.” George Santayana

“All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.” George Santayana

“Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.” George Santayana

“By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.” George Santayana

“Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.” George Santayana

“Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.” George Santayana

“If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.” George Santayana

“It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.” George Santayana

“It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.” George Santayana

“Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.” George Santayana

“Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.” George Santayana

“Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world.” George Santayana

“Music is essentially useless, as is life.” George Santayana

“Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.” George Santayana

“Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.” George Santayana

“Oaths are the fossils of piety.” George Santayana

“Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.” George Santayana

“Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.” George Santayana

“That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.” George Santayana

“The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.” George Santayana

“The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy.” George Santayana

“The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art.” George Santayana

“The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.” George Santayana

“The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.” George Santayana

“The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.” George Santayana

“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” George Santayana

“To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.” George Santayana

“Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.” George Santayana

“Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.” George Santayana