George Santayana
George Santayana (16 December 1863 in Madrid, Spain – 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy), was a philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.
Found 69 thoughts of George Santayana
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
George Santayana
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.
George Santayana
The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
George Santayana
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.
George Santayana
The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.
George Santayana
As widowers proverbially marry again, so a man with the habit of friendship always finds new friends.
George Santayana
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
George Santayana
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
George Santayana
Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.
George Santayana
Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.
George Santayana
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
George Santayana
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.
George Santayana
I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
George Santayana
Wealth, religion and military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
George Santayana
A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.
George Santayana
Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
George Santayana
Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
George Santayana
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experience.
George Santayana
