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George Santayana

George Santayana Quotes

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Famous George Santayana Quotes

“Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. 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.”

WritingHumansLittlesAgeLastsYoungSpiritHuman BeingsPleasureMiddleYouthAdventurePureQuietAnxietyDialogueOld AgeDrunkEnjoyedDescriptionJoyfulMiddle AgesTurmoilPuritanAnnoyancePleasures Of LifeLimboYoung FriendsWriting Dialogue
Author:George Santayana
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“Towers in a modern town are a frill and a survival; they seem like the raised hands of the various churches, afraid of being overlooked, and saying to the forgetful public, Here I am! Or perhaps they are rival lightning rods, saying to the emanations of divine grace, "Please strike here!”

HandsSeemsChurchGraceModernDivinePleaseSurvivalTownsRaisedVariousStrikesArchitectureLightningTowersRivalsHere I AmOverlookedDivine GraceForgetfulFrills
Author:George Santayana
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“Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.”

MayLongEndsReasonWould BeAtheismCivilizationDespairWinterPassionatePositive AtheismUnhappyNo ReasonEpisodesCatastropheChristendomPicturesqueComing To An End
Book:The Works of George Santayana: Character and opinion in the United States. The genteel tradition at bay. Dewey's naturalistic metaphysics. Philosophical heresy
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“It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods.”

Has BeensGivenAtheismHonorHighestPositive AtheismRememberedMotiveAttributesDeitiesPathetic
Book:Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana
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“Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.”

WellsSoulMatterFactsCausesReligiousAtheismSourceConflictPositive AtheismDoctrineBitterVainControversyMatter Of FactSectsPretensionImpurityIncoherence
Book:Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana
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“Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular.... Every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyncrasy. Its power consists in its special and surprising message and the bias which that revelation gives to life.”

GivingSpeakLanguageAtheismSpecialParticularHealthyMessagesPositive AtheismRevelationsHopelessSurprisingBiasIdiosyncrasies
Author:George Santayana
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“Logic, like language, is partly a free construction and partly a means of symbolizing and harnessing in expression the existing diversities of things; and whilst some languages, given a man's constitution and habits, may seem more beautiful and convenient to him than others, it is a foolish heat in a patriot to insist that only his native language is intelligible or right.”

MenMayMeanSeemsBeautifulLanguageGivenExpressionHabitDiversityLogicConstitutionFoolishHeatNativeConstructionPatriotConvenientNative Language
Author:George Santayana
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“Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly hangs about it, since it is the immovable standard and silent witness of all our memories and assertions; and the past and the future, which in our anxious life are so differently interesting and so differently dark, are one seamless garment for the truth, shining like the sun.”

IdeasRealityTruthPastFatherMemoriesDarkInterestingSunTruth IsStandardsShiningSilentWitnessAweCoveredAnxiousOur FatherGarmentsOur MemoriesAssertionEclecticSeamless
Book:Scepticism and Animal Faith
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“A conceived thing is doubly a product of mind, more a product of mind, if you will, than an idea, since ideas arise, so to speak,by the mind's inertia and conceptions of things by its activity. Ideas are mental sediment; conceived things are mental growths.”

IfsMindIdeasSpeakGrowthProductsActivityAriseConceptionInertia
Book:The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, Volume VII, Book One
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“You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.”

MenHeartLongPhilosophyShowsRealityAliveHonestProveAssumptionSincereRealismSkepticismIdealismHonest ManRealistIdealistSceptic
Book:Essays in critical realism: a co-operative study of the problem of knowledge
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“Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things.”

CausesEternalExperienceMereComplexesIllGlimpseRumblePeepholes
Book:The Works of George Santayana: The letters of George Santayana. 1933-1936. Vol. 5. Book 5
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“... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives are mortal if our soul is not; and the sentiment which reconciled Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as if we are to face only one.”

IfsSoulFacesInterestOur LivesNeededPossessionMortalsImmortalityImmortalSentimentsNevertheless
Book:The Works of George Santayana
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“We are not compelled in naturalism, or even in materialism, to ignore immaterial things; the point is that any immaterial things which are recognized shall be regarded as names, aspects, functions, or concomitant products of those physical things among which action goes on.”

ActionNamesProductsGoes OnAspectFunctionMaterialismCompelledNaturalismMaterial ThingsPhysical Things
Book:The Works of George Santayana: Character and opinion in the United States. The genteel tradition at bay. Dewey's naturalistic metaphysics. Philosophical heresy
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“The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is queen, infinite fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.”

HumansArtSoulLife IsPassionJusticeRaceIndustryIntellectualUniversalInfiniteMethodWorkersIntuitionQueensHuman RaceOrganizedFeminineDedicatedHumankindBeesPassiveInsectsMasculineSexuallyFertileBroodingIntellectual Life
Book:Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana
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“Man alone knows that he must die; but that very knowledge raises him, in a sense, above mortality, by making him a sharer in the vision of eternal truth. He becomes the spectator of his own tragedy; he sympathizes so much with the fury of the storm that he has no ears left for the shipwrecked sailor, though the sailor were his own soul. The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.”

KnowsMenSoulDiesLeftVisionTruth IsEternalEarsTragedyRaisesStormMortalitySpectatorsFurySailor
Author:George Santayana
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“I love moving water, I love ships, I love the sharp definition, the concentrated humanity, the sublime solitude of life at sea. The dangers of it only make present to us the peril inherent in all existence, which the stupid, ignorant, un-travelled land-worm never discovers; and the art of it, so mathematical, so exact, so rewarding to intelligence, appeals to courage and clears the mind of superstition, while filling it with humility and true religion.”

MindArtMovingHumanityWaterExistenceSeaLandStupidDangerHumilitySolitudeDefinitionsIgnorantShipsMathematicalAppealsSuperstitionsInherentSublimeWormsFillingPerilTrue ReligionMoving Water
Author:George Santayana
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