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George Santayana

George Santayana Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous George Santayana Quotes

“American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.”

MaySeemsAmericaLife IsPowerfulElementsIntellectualToughOptimismAliensNativeGood WillComplacencyAmerican LifeFuseThoughtlessness
Book:Character & Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America
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“Incapacity to appreciate certain types of beauty may be the condition sine qua non for the appreciation of another kind; the greatest capacity both for enjoyment and creation is highly specialized and exclusive, and hence the greatest ages of art have often been strangely intolerant. The invectives of one school against another, perverse as they are philosophically, are artistically often signs of health, because they indicate a vital appreciation of certain kinds of beauty, a love of them that has grown into a jealous passion.”

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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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“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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“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.”

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Book:The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings
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“Nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and as truly known at a certain distance as upon a closer view; as to knowing her through and through; that is nonsense in both cases, and might not reward our pains.”

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Book:Santayana on America: Essays, Notes, and Letters on American Life, Literature, and Philosophy
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“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.”

WorldWayLifeHumansMayPhilosophyHandsLife IsSpiritWinningHeavenKindnessHuman NatureAmbitionHatredAimProsperityVainGentleEmpiresTemperBloodyFlexibleStoopsAim Of LifeBloody Hands
Author:George Santayana
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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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