With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes. — George Santayana Art Copy Share Image
The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career. — George Santayana America Copy Share Image
What is more important in life than our bodies or in the world than what we look like? — George Santayana Body Copy Share Image
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana History Copy Share Image
To reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of this act are not always equally… — George Santayana Reform Copy Share Image
Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence… — George Santayana Aversion Copy Share Image
Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves. — George Santayana First love Copy Share Image
Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether. — George Santayana Accidents Copy Share Image
When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients. — George Santayana Mind Copy Share Image
Plasticity loves new moulds because it can fill them, but for a man of sluggish mind and bad manners there is decidedly… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the… — George Santayana Divine Copy Share Image
If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch;… — George Santayana Contempt Copy Share Image
The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be… — George Santayana Mass Copy Share Image
. . . until the curtain was rung down on the last act of the drama (and it might have no last… — George Santayana Actor Copy Share Image
“Those were the two prerequisites, in my conception, to perfect friendship: capacity to worship and capacity to laugh. Modern life is not… — George Santayana Eternal friendship Copy Share Image
Nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and as truly known at a certain distance as upon a… — George Santayana Beautiful Copy Share Image
What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word--the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, making a man… — George Santayana Buddhism Copy Share Image
There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal, as if it were not a benefit and… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Men have always been the victims of trifles, but when they were uncomfortable and passionate, and in constant danger, they hardly had… — George Santayana Calm Copy Share Image
Incapacity to appreciate certain types of beauty may be the condition sine qua non for the appreciation of another kind; the greatest… — George Santayana Age Copy Share Image
“Now the zest of romanticism consists in taking what you know is an independent and ancient world as if it were material… — George Santayana Barbarism Copy Share Image
History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had… — George Santayana Absolutes Copy Share Image
The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be… — George Santayana Ants Copy Share Image
Happiness is impossible, and even inconceivable, to a mind without scope and without pause, a mind driven by craving, pleasure, or fear.… — George Santayana Being wise Copy Share Image
“Lucretius, I. 936-47: Veluti pueris absinthia tetra medentes Cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circura Contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore, Ut puerorum… — George Santayana Amor Copy Share Image
“Masks are arrested expressions and admirable echoes of feeling, at once faithful, discrete, and superlative. Living things in contact with the air… — George Santayana Life Copy Share Image
The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many… — George Santayana Animal Copy Share Image
