George Santayana Quotes And Sayings

The Philosophy Of The Common Man Is An Old Wife That Gives Him No Pleasure, Yet He Cannot Live Without Her, And Resents Any Aspersions That Strangers May Cast On Her Character.

The Bible Is Literature, Not Dogma.

Religion In Its Humility Restores Man To His Only Dignity, The Courage To Live By Grace.

Do Not Have Evil-doers For Friends, Do Not Have Low People For Friends: Have Virtuous People For Friends, Have For Friends The Best Of Men.

Nothing So Much Enhances A Good As To Make Sacrifices For It.

To Knock A Thing Down, Especially If It Is Cocked At An Arrogant Angle, Is A Deep Delight Of The Blood.

Knowledge Is Recognition Of Something Absent; It Is A Salutation, Not An Embrace.

The Spirit's Foe In Man Has Not Been Simplicity, But Sophistication.

Nothing Can So Pierce The Soul As The Uttermost Sigh Of The Body.

Happiness Is The Only Sanction Of Life; Where Happiness Fails, Existence Remains A Mad And Lamentable Experiment.

There Is No Cure For Birth And Death Save To Enjoy The Interval.

The Body Is An Instrument, The Mind Its Function, The Witness And Reward Of Its Operation.

Fanaticism Consists Of Redoubling Your Effort When You Have Forgotten Your Aim.

There Is A Kind Of Courtesy In Skepticism. It Would Be An Offense Against Polite Conventions To Press Our Doubts Too Far.

Many Possessions, If They Do Not Make A Man Better, Are At Least Expected To Make His Children Happier; And This Pathetic Hope Is Behind Many Exertions.

The Lover Knows Much More About Absolute Good And Universal Beauty Than Any Logician Or Theologian, Unless The Latter, Too, Be Lovers In Disguise.

Oaths Are The Fossils Of Piety.

Intelligence Is Quickness In Seeing Things As They Are.

To Delight In War Is A Merit In The Soldier, A Dangerous Quality In The Captain, And A Positive Crime In The Statesman.

The Mind Of The Renaissance Was Not A Pilgrim Mind, But A Sedentary City Mind, Like That Of The Ancients.

History Is A Pack Of Lies About Events That Never Happened Told By People Who Weren't There.

Experience Seems To Most Of Us To Lead To Conclusions, But Empiricism Has Sworn Never To Draw Them.

Periods Of Tranquillity Are Seldom Prolific Of Creative Achievement. Mankind Has To Be Stirred Up.

The Great Difficulty In Education Is To Get Experience Out Of Ideas.

Skepticism, Like Chastity, Should Not Be Relinquished Too Readily.

If Pain Could Have Cured Us We Should Long Ago Have Been Saved.

Wealth, Religion, Military Victory Have More Rhetorical Than Efficacious Worth.

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.

Theory Helps Us To Bear Our Ignorance Of Facts.

The Hunger For Facile Wisdom Is The Root Of All False Philosophy.

The Truth Is Cruel, But It Can Be Loved, And It Makes Free Those Who Have Loved It.

The Highest Form Of Vanity Is Love Of Fame.

Knowledge Of What Is Possible Is The Beginning Of Happiness.

Habit Is Stronger Than Reason.

Tyrants Are Seldom Free; The Cares And The Instruments Of Their Tyranny Enslave Them.

A Soul Is But The Last Bubble Of A Long Fermentation In The World.

One's Friends Are That Part Of The Human Race With Which One Can Be Human.

My Atheism, Like That Of Spinoza, Is True Piety Towards The Universe And Denies Only Gods Fashioned By Men In Their Own Image, To Be Servants Of Their Human Interests.

Friendship Is Almost Always The Union Of A Part Of One Mind With The Part Of Another; People Are Friends In Spots.

Parents Lend Children Their Experience And A Vicarious Memory; Children Endow Their Parents With A Vicarious Immortality.

I Believe In General In A Dualism Between Facts And The Ideas Of Those Facts In Human Heads.

For Gold Is Tried In The Fire And Acceptable Men In The Furnace Of Adversity.

All Living Souls Welcome Whatever They Are Ready To Cope With; All Else They Ignore, Or Pronounce To Be Monstrous And Wrong, Or Deny To Be Possible.

Before You Contradict An Old Man, My Fair Friend, You Should Endeavor To Understand Him.

The Bible Is A Wonderful Source Of Inspiration For Those Who Don't Understand It.

Fun Is A Good Thing But Only When It Spoils Nothing Better.

To Me, It Seems A Dreadful Indignity To Have A Soul Controlled By Geography.

America Is A Young Country With An Old Mentality.

The Primary Use Of Conversation Is To Satisfy The Impulse To Talk.

The Effort Of Art Is To Keep What Is Interesting In Existence, To Recreate It In The Eternal.