Quotes by George Santayana

About George Santayana:

Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe permanently, never to return to the United States. His last wish was to be buried in the Spanish pantheon in Rome.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.

George Santayana

To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.

George Santayana

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions, their reasons are always different.

George Santayana

The wisest mind hath something yet to learn.

George Santayana

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

George Santayana

With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Ano...

George Santayana

The earth has music for those who listen.

George Santayana

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

George Santayana

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

George Santayana

love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.

George Santayana

The worship of power is an old religion.

George Santayana

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it ca...

George Santayana

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.

George Santayana

Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.

George Santayana

The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.

George Santayana

It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.

George Santayana

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

George Santayana

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.

George Santayana

By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.

George Santayana

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

George Santayana

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.

George Santayana

Author Bio

  • NameGeorge Santayana
  • Description20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism
  • BornDecember 16, 1863
  • DiedSeptember 26, 1952
  • CountrySpain
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Writer; Poet; Novelist; Essayist