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George Santayana Quotes - Page 4

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Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

George Santayana
Clouds, Air, Wind
George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2013). “The The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Society, Volume VII, Book Two”, p.115, MIT Press

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

George Santayana
Christian, Jesus, Ideas
"The Idea of Christ in the Gospels". Book by George Santayana, 1946.

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

George Santayana
Women, Different, Reason
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.87, 谷月社

The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about.

George Santayana
Exercise, Thinking, People
George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

George Santayana
Religion, Advertising, Argument
George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.

George Santayana
Commitment, Foundation, Needs
George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2013). “The The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Society, Volume VII, Book Two”, p.20, MIT Press

The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.

George Santayana
Intellectual, Mediocrity, World
George Santayana, William G. Holzberger (2003). “The Works of George Santayana: The letters of George Santayana. 1933-1936. Vol. 5. Book 5”, p.148, MIT Press

Our character ... is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

George Santayana
Integrity, Character, Army

For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep.

George Santayana
Sleep, Men, Hair

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

George Santayana
Summer, Nature, Fate
George Santayana (1967). “Animal Faith and Spiritual Life”, Irvington Pub

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.

George Santayana
Kings, History, Interesting
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.378, 谷月社

Man's most serious activity is play.

George Santayana
Men, Playing Games, Serious

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

George Santayana
Inspirational, Family, Brother
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.23, MIT Press

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.

George Santayana
Running, Holiday, Order

The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive

George Santayana
Men, Age, Alive
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.326, Indiana University Press

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.

George Santayana
Progress, Quality, Speak
George Santayana (2014). “Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion”, p.7, The Floating Press

Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.

George Santayana
Vigilance, Eternal, Eternal Vigilance
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.537, Indiana University Press

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

George Santayana
Courage, Humility, Men
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”

Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.

George Santayana
Free Gifts, Miracle, Moments
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.340, Indiana University Press

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

George Santayana
Education, Ideas, Difficulty
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.9, Рипол Классик

It is true that I am carrying out various methods of treatment recommended by doctors and dentists in the hope of dying in the remote future in perfect health.

George Santayana
Doctors, Perfect, Dying
George Santayana (2003). “The Letters of George Santayana”, p.152, MIT Press

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

George Santayana
Wisdom, Words Of Wisdom, Disillusionment

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

George Santayana
Life, Laughter, Confused
George Santayana (1936). “The Philosophy of Santayana”

Work and love these are the basics; waking life is a dream controlled.

George Santayana
Dream, And Love, Waking Life

Man alone knows that he must die; but that very knowledge raises him, in a sense, above mortality, by making him a sharer in the vision of eternal truth. He becomes the spectator of his own tragedy; he sympathizes so much with the fury of the storm that he has no ears left for the shipwrecked sailor, though the sailor were his own soul. The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

George Santayana
Men, Soul, Vision
'Little Essays' (1920) 'Ideal Immortality'

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