Quotes by George Santayana
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.
It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.
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.
When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.
Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.
Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.
If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.
The Bible is literature, not dogma.
Habit is stronger than reason.
Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.
The highest form of vanity is love of fame.
Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.
