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George Santayana Quotes - Page 19

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There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all

There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all had to be. Why, if we are not vain or snobbish, need we desire that it should have been different? The better things we missed may yet be enjoyed or attained by someone else somewhere: why isn't that just as good? And there is no regret, either, in the sense of wishing the past to return, or missing it: it is quite real enough as it is, there at its own date and place.

George Santayana
Regret, Real, Past
"The Letters of George Santayana".

Manhood and sagacity ripen of themselves; it suffices not to repress or distort them.

George Santayana
Character, Personality, Sagacity
George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.28, Sheba Blake Publishing

You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

George Santayana
Dream, Optimism, Body
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.471, 谷月社

Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's fine feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life.

George Santayana
Optimism, Feelings, Religion
George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.11, Sheba Blake Publishing

Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.

George Santayana
Sacrifice, Making Sacrifices, Sacrifice For Others
George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.70, Courier Corporation

Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.

George Santayana
Philosophy, College, Oxford
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.215, Рипол Классик

... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives are mortal if our soul is not; and the sentiment which reconciled Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as if we are to face only one.

George Santayana
Soul, Faces, Immortality
George Santayana (1936). “The Works of 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
Relative Value, May, Common
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.281, 谷月社

We are not compelled in naturalism, or even in materialism, to ignore immaterial things; the point is that any immaterial things which are recognized shall be regarded as names, aspects, functions, or concomitant products of those physical things among which action goes on.

George Santayana
Names, Goes On, Action
George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Character and opinion in the United States. The genteel tradition at bay. Dewey's naturalistic metaphysics. Philosophical heresy”

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

George Santayana
Blood, History, Arrogant
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.51, MIT Press

Those who cannot remember the pastare condemned to repeat it. or: Those who have never heard of good system development practice are condemned to reinvent it.

George Santayana
Past, Practice, Development

It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior.

George Santayana
War, Men, Blood
George Santayana (1986). “The Works of George Santayana”

It is in rare and scattered instants that beauty smiles even on her adorers, who are reduced for habitual comfort to remembering her past favours.

George Santayana
Beauty, Past, Comfort
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.118, MIT Press

With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

George Santayana
Country, Memories, Heart
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.484, Indiana University Press

Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.

George Santayana
Despair, Vitality, Reason
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.152, Indiana University Press

What is false in the science of facts may be true in the science of values.

George Santayana
May, Facts, Being True
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.63, Рипол Классик

What better comfort have we, or what other Profit in living Than to feed, sobered by the truth of Nature, Awhile upon her beauty, And hand her torch of gladness to the ages Following after?

George Santayana
Hands, Environmental, Age
George Santayana (1906). “Sonnets and Other Verses”

Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly hangs about it, since it is the immovable standard and silent witness of all our memories and assertions; and the past and the future, which in our anxious life are so differently interesting and so differently dark, are one seamless garment for the truth, shining like the sun.

George Santayana
Truth, Memories, Father
George Santayana (2013). “Scepticism and Animal Faith”, p.268, Courier Corporation

The habit of looking for beauty in everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things, our sense, hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.

George Santayana
Beauty, Perfection, Missing
George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.77, Courier Corporation

The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history.

George Santayana
Theater, Artifice
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.84, Indiana University Press

The world is so ordered that we must, in a material sense, lose everything we have and love, one thing after another, until we ourselves close our eyes.

George Santayana
Eye, And Love, World
George Santayana, William G. Holzberger (2001). “The letters of George Santayana”, p.248, MIT Press

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