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George Santayana

George Santayana Quotes

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Famous George Santayana Quotes

“In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour.”

IfsWorldSometimesHeavenJusticePrinciplesThis WorldIdealsMereSeekingActivePassingKingdomsPassingsInstanceObservationConceptionOur ThoughtsIdealismEndeavourKingdom Of HeavenVanishingVanishing Point
Author:George Santayana
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“Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire.”

IfsWorldShouldHas BeensWarSoulReligionUniverseChristianityFireImpossibleBuddhismMoralityQuietAmbitionHatredSickInfiniteTyrannyLiberationBlissCrownsBurnedScentHeresyFuriousPersecutedHoundsExterminationAnestheticsSick World
Author:George Santayana
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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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“... 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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“Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.”

IfsWorldFirstsLittlesLastsBenefitsPhotographyClothesRidiculousWelcomeAmusementPosterityBest SmileRidiculous Things
Book:Animal Faith and Spiritual Life
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“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; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me.”

IfsKnowsMindHeartMayMadeCountryYoungLife IsMemoriesRichGreaterTreeMinesWindGreenCharityDearTreasureForestsEaseHonourScarceOf My MindPassed AwayResignedFriendlinessChapelAmityYoung At HeartCountry Roads
Book:The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings
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“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.”

IfsNeedsActionValuesCausesInterestingHistoryPlansWrittenEventsKingsAchievementAbsolutesHarmonyHistoricalPlanningMotiveAppropriateMarchBuriedHistorianOblivionProphetic
Book:The Life of Reason: Human Understanding
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“If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch; or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.”

IfsWorldRealityLeftIllusionMereDecentHypocrisyContemptFunk
Book:The Works of George Santayana: Dialogues in limbo. Platonism and the spiritual life. A long way round to Nirvana. The prestige of the infinite. Ultimate religion
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“Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.”

IfsFormSpiritIndividualJusticeConscienceAccidentsBarsJustified
Book:The Works of George Santayana: Dialogues in limbo. Platonism and the spiritual life. A long way round to Nirvana. The prestige of the infinite. Ultimate religion
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“The scientific value of truth is not, however, ultimate or absolute. It rests partly on practical, partly on aesthetic interests. As our ideas are gradually brought into conformity with the facts by the painful process of selection,-for intuition runs equally into truth and into error, and can settle nothing if not controlled by experience,-we gain vastly in our command over our environment. This is the fundamental value of natural science”

IfsIdeasFactsRunningScienceValuesProcessInterestNaturalEnvironmentTruth IsGainsUltimateAbsolutesFundamentalsErrorsPainfulIntuitionPracticalsCommandSettlingConformityControlledAestheticSelectionOur EnvironmentNatural Science
Book:The Sense of Beauty
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“To most people, I fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be at a loss to reply, until they remembered what they had heard about astronomy, and the great size and distance and possible habitation of those orbs. ... [We] persuade ourselves that the power of the starry heavens lies in the suggestion of astronomical facts.”

PeopleIfsFactsWould BeBeautifulScienceLyingHeavenStarsLossHeardDistanceSizeAstronomyRememberedFancySuggestionsOrbs
Book:The Sense of Beauty
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“Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.”

IfsMindHumansGodFoundHeavenSpaceBrainHuman MindStar GazingTelescopesMicroscopes
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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“It is a pleasant surprise to him (the pure mathematician) and an added problem if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them, much as if a composer found that sailors could heave better when singing his songs.”

IfsArtUseProblemSongFoundPureSingingMathematicsSurpriseMathSensesMathematicalPleasantComposerMathematicianCalculationsSailorVerifyPleasant Surprises
Book:Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
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“The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.”

IfsWayHas BeensEvilRaceFamilyClassSpecialInvolvedLaborSlaveWorkersDivisionNurseDragBeesUnnecessaryIrrationalAntsVexationDivision Of Labor
Book:The Life of Reason: Or, The Phases of Human Progress
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“There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us ashamed of ourselves when it was happening: there is a pleasant panoramic sense of what it all was and how it all had to be. Why, if we are not vain or snobbish, need we desire that it should have been different? The better things we missed may yet be enjoyed or attained by someone else somewhere: why isn't that just as good? And there is no regret, either, in the sense of wishing the past to return, or missing it: it is quite real enough as it is, there at its own date and place.”

IfsNeedsShouldMayLongHas BeensMadeDifferentRealEnoughPastDesireWishMissingRegretReturnHappeningsShould HaveEnjoyedVainPleasantAshamedRemorseShould Have BeenNo RegretsMissing ItSnobbish
Author:George Santayana
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