Epifanio de los Santos, greatest connoisseur of Filipiniana, foremost Filipino historian and biographer, and the first Filipino to become member of the Spanish Academy of Letters.

Among the new bibliographers, Sr. Epifanio de los Santos, a young scholar with great culture, stood at the head; he possessed more than 2,000 titles, some of them were very rare.

One of the best product of the 20th century Renaissance in Philippine arts and letters, Don Epifanio de los Santos y Cristobal exemplified the intellectual gentlemen whose passion for knowledge and the arts paralleled his life long existence.

Epifanio de los Santos was a genius, with all the great spontaneity and fire, and all the almost analyzable complexity of such a spirit. … His scholarship was profound. … Yet he was no mere pedant. He was never solemn. He was too wise to take life too seriously. He was always jovial and good company. He was something of a sensualist and liked good food and drink. But he had moments of sadness, and there were times when he drank not for pleasure, but for surcease.

He was undoubtedly the best critic, writer and biographer that the golden age of literature in our country have ever produced. An artist by temperament, he was a scholar in the truest sense, interested and well versed in all branches of human learning, not in the manner of present-day specialists who confine themselves in the limited branches of their chosen fields. He was also recognized as the most authoritative historian and interpreter of fruitful and transcendental events in our epoch, a researcher of the first order, a collector of rare and antique objects that are landmarks of Philippine culture. None could equal him in rigidness and perseverance and study of our past , even in search of our wealth of relevant and important data that enrich the sources for the study of national history and literature. He was also recognized as the foremost Filipino scholar of his time. -Rafael Palma

Great among the Great Filipino Scholars.. He was recognized as the foremost scholar of his time.

..he brought a sanity of perception and appraisal to his criticism of our prose productions, our plays, our linguistics, and what ever in letters that touches vitally the life of his people. The country has lost a truly great man in the death of Epifanio de los Santos Cristobal. He wrought for himself a destiny of glory which is the glory of his native land.

He was the first highly educated and cultured Filipino to direct he attention of his countrymen to their illustrious men, and to their art, literature, poetry and music.

...the greatest Filipino sculptor, in or outside the Philippines

To be a worthy biographer of Senor de los Santos you would have to be his equal, so that remains a thing undone perhaps undoable, but that admiration he feels for his countrymen---the very best--other feels for him and they have crowned him as a leader in the path of scholarship.

On more than one occasion when reading Epifanio de los Santos, one reads Don Juan Valera.

...we were not aware of this and the seditious character of the poem (Balagtas' Florante and Laura) until Epifanio de los Santos discovered and pointed them out

.was one of the most brilliant students of the Ateneo Municipal as far as humanities and natural and mathematical sciences are concerned

The foremost literarian in the Philippines. - Claro M. Recto.