Quote

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

George Santayana

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Perhaps
True
Men
Hardiness
Despise
Dignity
Capacity

More quotes by George Santayana

Image
The profoundest affinities are those most readily felt, and though a thousand later considerations may overlay and override them, they remain a background and standard for all happiness. If we trace them out we succeed.
George Santayana
Image
We are not compelled in naturalism, or even in materialism, to ignore immaterial things the point is that any immaterial things which are recognized shall be regarded as names, aspects, functions, or concomitant products of those physical things among which action goes on.
George Santayana
Image
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.
George Santayana
Image
Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.
George Santayana
Image
It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior.
George Santayana
Image
Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.
George Santayana
Image
What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word--the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, making a man rub his eyes in his waking dream, and put two and two together. Enlightenment is cold water.
George Santayana
Image
It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.
George Santayana
Image
Art is a delayed echo.
George Santayana
Image
America is a young country with an old mentality.
George Santayana
Image
If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
George Santayana
Image
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable what it is or what it means can never be said.
George Santayana
Image
People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.
George Santayana
Image
Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.
George Santayana
Image
The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.
George Santayana
Image
One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.
George Santayana
Image
Oaths are the fossils of piety.
George Santayana
Image
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 timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.
George Santayana
Image
Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.
George Santayana
Image
Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.
George Santayana