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Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

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
Breathe
Air
Necessary
Wind
Society
Live
Like
Insufficient
Clouds

More quotes by George Santayana

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A simple life is its own reward.
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America is a young country with an old mentality.
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Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age
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There is nothing sacred about convention there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.
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Men have always been the victims of trifles, but when they were uncomfortable and passionate, and in constant danger, they hardly had time to notice what the daily texture of their thoughts was in their calm intervals, whereas with us the intervals are all.
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Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful.
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We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.
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The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.
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The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
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A friend's only gift is himself.
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Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events.
George Santayana
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Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
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There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.
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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.
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Prayer is not a substitute for work it is an effort to work further and be efficient beyond the range of one's powers.
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For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing.
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Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana
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What better comfort have we, or what other Profit in living Than to feed, sobered by the truth of Nature, Awhile upon her beauty, And hand her torch of gladness to the ages Following after?
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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.
George Santayana
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The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
George Santayana