George Santayana Quotes

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.

O WORLD, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise,. And on the inward vision close the eyes,. But it is wisdom to believe the heart.

Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.

The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder.

Truth is only belived when someone has invented it well.

I stand in philosophy exactly where I stand in daily life; I should not be honest otherwise.

Science is the response to the demand for information, and in it we ask for the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends.

faith in the intellect...is the only faith yet sanctioned by its fruits

A certain vagueness of soul, together with a great gregariousness and tendency to be moulded by example and by prevalent opinion, is requisite for feeling free under English liberty. You must find the majority right enough to live with; you must give up lost causes; you must be willing to put your favourite notions to sleep in the family cradle of convention. Enthusiasts for democracy, peace, and a league of nations should not deceive themselves; they are not everybody’s friends; they are the enemies of what is deepest and most primitive in everybody. They inspire undying hatred in every untamable people and every absolute soul.

Un om este liber din punct de vedere moral când [...] judecă lumea şi îi judecă pe ceilalţi oameni cu o sinceritate care nu face compromisuri.

In the passion of love, for instance, a cause unknown to the
sufferer, but which is doubtless the spring-flood of hereditary
instincts accidentally let loose, suddenly checks the young
man's gayety, dispels his random curiosity, arrests perhaps his very breath; and when he looks for a cause to explain his
suspended faculties, he can find it only in the presence or image of another being, of whose character, possibly, he knows nothing and whose beauty may not be remarkable; yet
that image pursues him everywhere, and he is dominated by
an unaccustomed tragic earnestness and a new capacity for
suffering and joy.
If the passion be strong there is no previous interest or duty that
will be remembered before it; if it be lasting the whole life may
be reorganized by it, it may impose new habits, other manners,
and another religion.
Yet what is the root of all this idealism? An irrational instinct,
normally intermittent, such as all dumb creatures share, which
has here managed to dominate a human soul and to enlist all the
mental powers in its more or less permanent service, upsetting
their usual equilibrium.
This madness, however, inspires method; and for the first time,
perhaps, in his life, the man has something to live for.

Music is essentially useless, as life is.

ولكن يندر أن يوجد الرجل أو العصر الذى ينتقى طريقه بمفرده ، بل يقتصر اختيارنا على العموم على واحد من اثنين : فإما أن نسبق غيرنا في الطريق الذي تم اختياره لنا فعلاً ، وإما أن نقف فى الطريق فنسده أمامهم . وما يمكننا أن نقوم به من إصلاح لا يتعدى عادة الإصلاح الداخلي الذي يتم في حدود معينة ، ويكون نتيجة دراسة الأشكال التقليدية دراسة أكثر عمقاً

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.