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George Santayana Quotes - Page 16

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The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all existence.

The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all existence.

George Santayana
Art, Men, Discipline
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.327, 谷月社

Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.

George Santayana
Real, Intuition, Criticism
George Santayana (2009). “The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress”, p.1058, The Floating Press

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
Memories, Poverty, Pleasure
George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.44, Courier Corporation

The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.

George Santayana
Science, Progress, Body
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.106, Рипол Классик

Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress.

George Santayana
Ideas, Progress, Would Be
George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2011). “The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, Volume VII, Book One”, p.130, MIT Press

A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary.

George Santayana
Spirituality, Social, Source
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.265, Рипол Классик

Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise.

George Santayana
Philosophy, Jealous, Want
"The Works of George Santayana".

Philosophy may describe unreasoning, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to refute them.

George Santayana
Philosophy, May, Force
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.160, 谷月社

For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing.

George Santayana
Choices, Atheism, Matter
George Santayana (1936). “The Works of George Santayana: Interpretations of the poetry and religion. Hamlet. Shelley. Dickens. Tragic philosophy”

The living have never shown me how to live.

George Santayana
George Santayana (1936). “The Philosophy of Santayana”

Music is essentially useless, as life is; but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

George Santayana
Music, Useless, Life Is
'The Life of Reason' (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4

It is a pleasant surprise to him (the pure mathematician) and an added problem if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them, much as if a composer found that sailors could heave better when singing his songs.

George Santayana
Song, Art, Math
George Santayana (2014). “Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy”, p.81, Cambridge University Press

Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow And be not happy like a naked star, Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow, Some rapture from the rapture felt afar.

George Santayana
Peace, Stars, Heart
George Santayana (1979). “The complete poems of George Santayana: a critical edition”, Associated Univ Pr

A musical education is necessary for musical judgement. What most people relish is hardly music; it is rather a drowsy reverie relieved by nervous thrills.

George Santayana
Education, People, Judgement

Even the most inspired verse, which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal, becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic; the language it was written in dies, a learned education and an imaginative effort are requisite to catch even a vestige of its original force. Nothing is so irrevocable as mind.

George Santayana
Effort, Mind, Age
George Santayana (1932). “The Life of Reason”, p.74, Library of Alexandria

What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude : the aims of friendship , religion , science , and art .

George Santayana
Art, Men, Giving
George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2013). “The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Society, Volume VII, Book Two”, p.84, MIT Press

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.

George Santayana
Together, Needs, Intimacy
George Santayana, William G. Holzberger (2008). “The Letters of George Santayana, Book Eight, 1948-1952”, p.211, MIT Press

The truth properly means the sum of all true propositions, what omniscience would assert, the whole ideal system of qualities andrelations which the world has exemplified or will exemplify. The truth is all things seen under the form of eternity.

George Santayana
Truth, Mean, Quality
George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.72, Sheba Blake Publishing

To most people, I fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be at a loss to reply, until they remembered what they had heard about astronomy, and the great size and distance and possible habitation of those orbs. ... [We] persuade ourselves that the power of the starry heavens lies in the suggestion of astronomical facts.

George Santayana
Beautiful, Stars, Distance
George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.64, Courier Corporation

The sophisticated concern about art sinks before a spontaneous love of reality, and I thank the photograph for being so transparent a vehicle for things.

George Santayana
Art, Reality, Spontaneous
George Santayana (1967). “Animal Faith and Spiritual Life”, Irvington Pub

An operation that eventually kills may be technically successful, and the man may die cured; and so a description of religion thatshowed it to be madness might first show how real and warm it was, so that if it perished, at least it would perish understood.

George Santayana
Real, Successful, Men
George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.40, Sheba Blake Publishing

There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal, as if it were not a benefit and a joy to a man, being what he is, to know that many are, have been, and will be better than he.

George Santayana
Men, Stupidity, Joy
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.59, 谷月社

Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the rumble of cities.

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

The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.... If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror and amusement, so magnificent is the spirit.

George Santayana
World, Amusement, Spirit

Sometimes we have to change the truth in order to remember it.

George Santayana
Order, Remember, Sometimes

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