The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication. — George Santayana Foe Copy Share Image
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings. — George Santayana Shrapnel Copy Share Image
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences. — George Santayana America Copy Share Image
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human. — George Santayana Friend Copy Share Image
Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity. — George Santayana Insanity Copy Share Image
“History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. . . . History is… — George Santayana History Copy Share Image
Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends. — George Santayana Copy Share Image
The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age. — George Santayana Age Copy Share Image
Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome — George Santayana Copy Share Image
Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith. — George Santayana Christianity 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 Copy Share Image
There is a prodigious selfishness in dreams: they live perfectly deaf and invulnerable amid the cries of the real world. — George Santayana Cry Copy Share Image
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him. — George Santayana Advice Copy Share Image
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort… — George Santayana Beautiful Copy Share Image
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's… — George Santayana Happiness Copy Share Image
There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and… — George Santayana Copy Share Image
O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close… — George Santayana Art Copy Share Image
Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying… — George Santayana Destiny Copy Share Image
It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed… — George Santayana Adventurer Copy Share Image
Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say… — George Santayana Asylums Copy Share Image
Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow And be not happy like a naked star, Yet from the thought of… — George Santayana 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 Barbarians 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
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
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
“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
Man alone knows that he must die; but that very knowledge raises him, in a sense, above mortality, by making him a… — George Santayana Death Copy Share Image
I love moving water, I love ships, I love the sharp definition, the concentrated humanity, the sublime solitude of life at sea.… — 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 Absolutes Copy Share Image
