Quote

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.

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
World
Caricatures
Mockery
Pretending
Perpetual
Contradiction
Moment
Moments
Every
Caricature

More quotes by George Santayana

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To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.
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Is it indeed from the experience of beauty and happiness, from the occasional harmony between our nature and our environment, that we draw our conception of the divine life.
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Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
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To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
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Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.
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The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.
George Santayana
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The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder.
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Oaths are the fossils of piety.
George Santayana
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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.
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Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length.
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The Universe, so far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine its extent, its order, its beauty, its cruelty, makes it alike impressive.
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Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts.
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Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway
George Santayana
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The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence
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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 Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.
George Santayana
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... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives are mortal if our soul is not and the sentiment which reconciled Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as if we are to face only one.
George Santayana
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Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid.
George Santayana
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To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
George Santayana
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Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.
George Santayana