George Santayana Quotes

George Santayana Quote: The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk
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Oliver realised for the first time that the primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk. General conversation bored him because he was naturally silent.

George Santayana (The Last Puritan, 1935)

Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

George Santayana (The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, 1946)

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.

George Santayana (Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government)

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

George Santayana (Soliloquies in England, 1922)

The living have never shown me how to live.

George Santayana

Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it.

George Santayana (Winds of Doctrine, 1913)

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.

George Santayana (Winds of Doctrine, 1913)

George Santayana Quote: In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.

In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.

George Santayana (The Sense of Beauty, 1896)

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said..

George Santayana (The Sense of Beauty, 1896)

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

George Santayana (Supernaturalism)

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

George Santayana (Soliloquies in England, 1922)

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

George Santayana (The Ethics of Spinoza)

By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.

George Santayana

Religion is the natural reaction of the imagination when confronted by the difficulties in a truculent world.

George Santayana (Quoted in the Atlantic Monthly, 1953)

Nothing you can lose by dying is half so precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of nobility.

George Santayana (Soliloquies in England, 1922)

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.

George Santayana (Soliloquies in England, 1922)

Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.

George Santayana (Quoted in the Wisdom of George Santayana, 1964)

Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

George Santayana (The German Mind: A Philosophical Diagnosis)

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

George Santayana (The Sense of Beauty, 1896)

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.

George Santayana (Quoted in the Wisdom of George Santayana, 1964)

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

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George Santayana Biography

Born: December 16, 1863
Died: September 26, 1952

George Santayana was an Spanish-born American philosopher, poet and writer. He is perhaps best known for his many aphorisms and his philosophy.

Notable Works

The Sense of Beauty (1896)
Life of Reason (1905)
Scepticism and Animal Faith
(1923)
The Last Puritan (1935)
The Realms of Being (1942)
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