Quotes by George Santayana
Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.
Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep.
Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.
The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.
To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.
Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.
The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.
The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.
America is a young country with an old mentality.
The Soul is the voice of the body's interests.
The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.
It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud.
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
