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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
Air
Necessary
Wind
Society
Live
Like
Insufficient
Clouds
Breathe

More quotes by George Santayana

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Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.
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A way foolishness has of revenging itself is to excommunicate the world.
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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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We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.
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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.
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Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.
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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.
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Does the thoughtful man suppose that...the present experiment in civilization is the last world we will see?
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Wisdom comes from disillusionment.
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The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.
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Nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and as truly known at a certain distance as upon a closer view as to knowing her through and through that is nonsense in both cases, and might not reward our pains.
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Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful.
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People never believe in volcanoes until the lava actually overtakes them.
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A friend's only gift is himself.
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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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America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
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The habit of looking for beauty in everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things, our sense, hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.
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Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway
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An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
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Imagination is potentially infinite. Though actually we are limited to the types of experience for which we possess organs, those organs are somewhat plastic. Opportunity will change their scope and even their center.
George Santayana