If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine… If we dramatize its life and conceive… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
In the concert of nature it is hard to keep in tune with oneself if one is out of tune with everything… — George Santayana 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 Copy Share Image
It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility — George Santayana Copy Share Image
When a man's life is over, it remains true that he was one sort of man and not another. A man who… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
A conceived thing is doubly a product of mind, more a product of mind, if you will, than an idea, since ideas… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
It is a pleasant surprise to him (the pure mathematician) and an added problem if he finds that the arts can use… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The profoundest affinities are those most readily felt, and though a thousand later considerations may overlay and override them, they remain a… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The little word is has its tragedies: it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The scientific value of truth is not, however, ultimate or absolute. It rests partly on practical, partly on aesthetic interests. As our… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather… — George Santayana 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 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
Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
If clearness about things produces a fundamental despair, a fundamental despair in turn produces a remarkable clearness or even playfulness about ordinary… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
An operation that eventually kills may be technically successful, and the man may die cured; and so a description of religion thatshowed… — George Santayana 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 Copy Share Image
To most people, I fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be at a loss to reply,… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The combative instinct is a savage prompting by which one man's good is found in another's evil. — George Santayana Copy Share
To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language. — George Santayana Copy Share
“The contemporary world has turned its back on the attempt and even on the desire to live reasonably.” — George Santayana Copy Share
The pride of the artisan in his art and its uses is pride in himself...It is in his skill and ability to make things… — George Santayana Copy Share
Towers in a modern town are a frill and a survival; they seem like the raised hands of the various churches, afraid of being… — George Santayana Copy Share
Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth. — George Santayana Copy Share
Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had… — George Santayana Copy Share
Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a… — George Santayana Copy Share
Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood. — George Santayana Copy Share
Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others,… — George Santayana Copy Share
![“To most people, I fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be at a loss to reply, until they remembered what they had heard about astronomy, and the great size and distance and possible habitation of those orbs. ... [We] persuade ourselves that the power of the starry…” quote by George Santayana](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/603/george-santayana-478_astronomy_to-most-people-i-fancy-the-stars-are-bea_192902.png)