George Santayana Top 10 Quotes

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)

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

George Santayana (Soliloquies in England, 1922)

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

George Santayana (Soliloquies in England, 1922)

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)

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

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)

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

George Santayana (Soliloquies in England, 1922)

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

George Santayana (Premonition)

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana (Life of Reason, 1905)

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

George Santayana (Platonism and the Spiritual Life, 1927)