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It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.

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
Saint
Easier
Make
Prig
Libertine

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The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all existence.
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An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
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The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.
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The earth has music for those who listen.
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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.
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Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.
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An ideal cannot wait for its realization to prove its validity.
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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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Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.
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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.
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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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A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption it is not a symbol, but a fraud.
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Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
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Reason and happiness are like other flowers they wither when plucked.
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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.
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It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.
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Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.
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We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.
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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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Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity.
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