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George Santayana

George Santayana Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous George Santayana Quotes

“Men have always been the victims of trifles, but when they were uncomfortable and passionate, and in constant danger, they hardly had time to notice what the daily texture of their thoughts was in their calm intervals, whereas with us the intervals are all.”

MenPeaceDangerVictimConstantCalmPassionateUncomfortableTextureTriflesIntervals
Book:The Works of George Santayana: The letters of George Santayana. 1921-1927. Vol. 5. Book 3
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“The wonder of an artist's performance grows with the range of his penetration, with the instinctive sympathy that makes him, in his mortal isolation, considerate of other men's fate and a great diviner of their secret, so that his work speaks to them kindly, with a deeper assurance than they could have spoken with to themselves.”

MenArtistSpeakGrowsSecretWonderFatePerformancesDeeperMortalsRangeIsolationAssuranceConsideratePenetration
Book:The Life of Reason: Human Understanding
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“What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude : the aims of friendship , religion , science , and art .”

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Book:The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Society, Volume VII, Book Two
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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.”

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Author:George Santayana
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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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“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.”

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Author:George Santayana
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“Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that 'a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.' At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.”

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Book:The Life of Reason ; Or, The Phases of Human Progress. One-volume Ed
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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... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.”

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Book:Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana
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“Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.”

MenCourageGraceHumilityDignityLive ByPersonal Dignity
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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