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George Santayana Quotes - Page 14

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A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or as the consciousness of a right life, can quicken us from within.

A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or as the consciousness of a right life, can quicken us from within.

George Santayana
Happiness, Nature, Grateful
George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.68, Courier Corporation

I leave you but the sound of many a word In mocking echoes haply overheard, I sang to heaven. My exile made me free, from world to world, from all worlds carried me.

George Santayana
Echoes, Heaven, Sound
George Santayana (1979). “The complete poems of George Santayana: a critical edition”, Associated Univ Pr

It is the acme of life to understand life.

George Santayana
Life
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.143, Рипол Классик

A buoyant and full-blooded soul has quick senses and miscellaneous sympathies: it changes with the changing world; and when not too much starved or thwarted by circumstances, it finds all things vivid and comic. Life is free play fundamentally and would like to be free play altogether.

George Santayana
Play, Soul, World
George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Soliloquies in England and Later soliloquies”

What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word--the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, making a man rub his eyes in his waking dream, and put two and two together. Enlightenment is cold water.

George Santayana
Dream, Eye, Men
George Santayana (1998). “The Genteel Tradition: Nine Essays”, p.139, U of Nebraska Press

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
Nature, Men, Questions And Answers
George Santayana (2011). “The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense”, p.86, MIT Press

Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty?

George Santayana
Love, Sex, Powerful
George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.39, Courier Corporation

The only kind of reform usually possible is reform from within; a more intimate study and more intelligent use of the traditional forms.

George Santayana
Intelligent, Reform, Use
George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.103, Courier Corporation

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 words.

George Santayana
Progress, May, Evolution
George Santayana (1970). “Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe”, p.151, Library of Alexandria

Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task is frankly superhuman.

George Santayana
Character, Past, Order
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.380, 谷月社

why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

George Santayana
Together, Absurd, Transitory
George Santayana, William G. Holzberger (2002). “The Letters of George Santayana”, p.319, MIT Press

The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.

George Santayana
Get Well, Mind, Body
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.15, Рипол Классик

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.

George Santayana
Health, Men, Disease
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.129, Indiana University Press

The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.

George Santayana
Evil, Optimism, Ruins
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.599, Indiana University Press

Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.

George Santayana
Fate, Justice, World
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.67, 谷月社

The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.

George Santayana
Heart, Eye, Men
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.120, Рипол Классик

It is one thing to lack a heart and another to possess eyes and a just imagination.

George Santayana
Heart, Eye, Imagination
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.198, 谷月社

Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.

George Santayana
Heart, Men, Religion
George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Dialogues in limbo. Platonism and the spiritual life. A long way round to Nirvana. The prestige of the infinite. Ultimate religion”

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.

George Santayana
Soul, Body, Spirituality
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.150, Рипол Классик

The little word is has its tragedies: it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger.

George Santayana
Lying, Two, Tragedy
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.78, Indiana University Press

Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends.

George Santayana
Art, Imagination, Demand
George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.15, Courier Corporation

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

George Santayana
Long, Poetry, Ancient
George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2015). “The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Art, Volume VII, Book Four”, p.58, MIT Press

Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.

George Santayana
Fighting, Animal, Men
George Santayana (1950). “Atoms of Thought: An Anthology of Thoughts”

One real world is enough.

George Santayana
Real, World, Enough
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.31, Рипол Классик

To drink in the spirit of a place you should be not only alone but unhurried.

George Santayana
Drinking, Spirit, Drink

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