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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

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George Santayana
Age: 88 †
Born: 1863
Born: October 2
Died: 1952
Died: September 16
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Madrid
Spain
Jorge Santayana
Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana
Jorge Augustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana
George Santayana
Past
Remember
Humanly
Must
Remembering
Welcome
Soon
Respect
Possible
Future

More quotes by George Santayana

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Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.
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The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.
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Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience - the union of life and peace.
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Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
George Santayana
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I feel so much the continual death of everything and everybody, and have so learned to reconcile myself to it, that the final and official end loses most of its impressiveness.
George Santayana
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Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification.
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Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.
George Santayana
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The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
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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.
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The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.
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The earth has music for those who listen.
George Santayana
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If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
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Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.
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Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.
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American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.
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Lovely promise and quick ruin are seen nowhere better than in Gothic architecture.
George Santayana
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America is a young country with an old mentality.
George Santayana
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It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.
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The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.
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Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.
George Santayana