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George Santayana Quotes - Page 5

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Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.

Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.

George Santayana
Inspirational, Real, Share
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.458, Indiana University Press

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.

George Santayana
Imagination, Vivid, Taste
George Santayana (2004). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.11, Cosimo, Inc.

Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself.

George Santayana
Function, Dear, Adopted
The Life of Reason vol. 3, ch. 1 (1905)

There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.

George Santayana
Men, Drink, Reconcile
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.27, Рипол Классик

In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour.

George Santayana
Justice, Heaven, World
"Interpretations of Poetry and Religion" by George Santayana, (p. 54), 1900.

The soul, too has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.

George Santayana
Soul, Littles, Fruit
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.136, Indiana University Press

America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.

George Santayana
Opportunity, America, Influence
George Santayana, William G. Holzberger (2001). “The Letters of George Santayana”, p.423, MIT Press

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

George Santayana
Bible, Religious, Hygiene
Benedictus de Spinoza, George Santayana (1910). “Spinoza's Ethics and "De Intellectus Emendatione".”

Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.

George Santayana
Writing, Adventure, Young Friends

Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire.

George Santayana
War, Ambition, Buddhism

Sanity is madness put to good use.

George Santayana
History, Use, Madness
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.269, Indiana University Press

Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.

George Santayana
Prayer, People, Effort
George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.138, 谷月社

There must ... be in our very nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the principles of the mind can be at all adequate that passes over so conspicuous a faculty.

George Santayana
Mind, Principles, Adequate

For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned

George Santayana
Fashion, Ideas, Investing
1913 Winds of Doctrine,'Modernism and Christianity'.

A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.

George Santayana
Long, Soul, World
George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.83, Рипол Классик

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
Life, Beautiful, Aggravation
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies "The Irony of Liberalism" (1922)

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.

George Santayana
Marriage, Patience, Appreciate
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 2, ch. 2

Columbus found a world, and had no chart save one that Faith deciphered in the skies.

George Santayana
Faith, Sky, World
George Santayana (1936). “The Philosophy of Santayana”

Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves.

George Santayana
Love, Half, Firsts
George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.321, Indiana University Press

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

George Santayana
Dream, Dreamer, Knows
George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

Better not be a hero than work oneself up into heroism by shouting lies.

George Santayana
Lying, Hero, Shouting
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”

Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.

George Santayana
Photography, Clothes, Benefits
George Santayana (1967). “Animal Faith and Spiritual Life”, Irvington Pub

Nothing you can lose by dying is half as precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of nobility.

George Santayana
Men, Funeral, Dying
George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Soliloquies in England and Later soliloquies”

Beauty is objectified pleasure.

George Santayana
Beauty, Pleasure

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

George Santayana
Inspirational, Life, Peace
George Santayana (1953). “Persons and Places: My host the world”

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