In any close society it is more urgent to restrain others than to be free oneself. Hence the tendency for the central… — George Santayana Authority Copy Share Image
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason. — George Santayana Customs Copy Share Image
Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end. — George Santayana Emotion Copy Share Image
Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all… — George Santayana Conventions Copy Share Image
The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer. — George Santayana Adversity Copy Share Image
There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far. — George Santayana Conventions Copy Share Image
Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence… — George Santayana Art 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 Amusement Copy Share Image
Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles. — George Santayana Boston 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
Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it… — George Santayana Absent 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
The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings. — George Santayana Thousand Copy Share Image
Prayer is not a substitute for work; it is an effort to work further and be efficient beyond the range of one's… — George Santayana Efficient 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
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
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. — George Santayana Country Copy Share Image
Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every… — George Santayana Balance Copy Share Image
American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to… — George Santayana Aliens 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 Concerts Copy Share Image
A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present. — George Santayana Art Copy Share Image
Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that… — George Santayana Assertion Copy Share Image
“The Platonic idealist is the man by nature so wedded to perfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the… — George Santayana Nature Copy Share Image
A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or as… — George Santayana Affection Copy Share Image
