George Santayana Quotes

Biography: George Santayana is known for his contributions to philosophy, literat... more Biography: George Santayana is known for his contributions to philosophy, literature, and criticism. He was a Spanish-American philosopher, poet, essayist, and novelist. Santayana was influential in various fields, particularly known for his work on aesthetics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. less

"The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.""Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are a burden and a torment to him.""The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.""Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.""There is no greater advantage in life than that of having been born into a happy home.""A man may not always eat and drink what is good for him, nor act as his reason directs.""The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian.""Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.""There is no cure for life and death save to enjoy the interval.""A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.""Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.""Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.""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.""A man is morally free when, in an extant universe, he is capable of doing whatever he thinks is right, of thinking whatever he believes is true, and of feeling whatever he feels.""The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.""Experience seems to most of us, for instance, to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.""Life is not a spectacle or feast; it is a predicament.""The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.""Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.""The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it."

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