Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
A fanatical imagination cannot regard God as just unless he is represented as infinitely cruel. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long… — George Santayana Action Copy Share Image
Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace. — George Santayana Courage Copy Share Image
The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular. — George Santayana Belief Copy Share Image
“The contemporary world has turned its back on the attempt and even on the desire to live reasonably.” — George Santayana Copy Share Image
“The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. Athletics… — George Santayana Exercise Copy Share Image
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experience. — George Santayana Happiness Copy Share Image
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction… — George Santayana Absolutes Copy Share Image
Children are natural mythologists: they beg to be told tales, and love not only to invent but to enact falsehoods. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end. — George Santayana People Copy Share Image
The Universe, so far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine; its extent, its order, its beauty, its… — George Santayana Beauty Copy Share Image
Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel. — George Santayana Dignity Copy Share Image
Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with… — George Santayana Freedom Copy Share Image
Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the… — George Santayana Friends Copy Share Image
The pride of the artisan in his art and its uses is pride in himself...It is in his skill and ability to… — George Santayana Ability Copy Share Image
There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. — George Santayana Exercise Copy Share Image
The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost. — George Santayana Aroma Copy Share Image
Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Nature in denying us perennial youth has at least invited us to become unselfish and noble. — George Santayana Environment Copy Share Image
The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all… — George Santayana Art Copy Share Image
As widowers proverbially marry again, so a man with the habit of friendship always finds new friends. — George Santayana Friendship 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 Animal Copy Share Image
Is it indeed from the experience of beauty and happiness, from the occasional harmony between our nature and our environment, that we… — George Santayana Beauty Copy Share Image
Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better. — George Santayana Advertising Copy Share Image
The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity. — George Santayana Creativity Copy Share Image
The strongest feelings assigned to the conscience are not moral feelings at all; they express merely physical antipathies. — George Santayana Antipathy Copy Share Image
The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder. — George Santayana Battle Copy Share Image
The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred. — 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 Image
It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers… — George Santayana Children Copy Share Image
...so in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being known how to touch it. That being is not selected… — George Santayana Heart Copy Share Image
Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that. — George Santayana Beautiful 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 Idealism Copy Share Image
Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy. — George Santayana Argument Copy Share Image
