Quote

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.

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
Felt
Denominator
Money
Reduced
Cannot
Relative
May
Specific
Wells
Exist
Without
Common
Well
Values
Like
Language

More quotes by George Santayana

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Sanctity and genius are as rebellious as vice.
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Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.
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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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Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.
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Order, for a liberal, means only peace and the hope of a profound peace was one of the chief motives in the liberal movement. Concessions and tolerance and equality would thus have really led to peace, and to peace of the most radical kind, the peace of moral extinction.
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The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
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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.
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In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.
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The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
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Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.
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The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
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Advertising is the modern substitute for argument its function is to make the worse appear the better.
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Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.
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The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
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The earth has music for those who listen.
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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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Memory itself is an internal rumour.
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The wonder of an artist's performance grows with the range of his penetration, with the instinctive sympathy that makes him, in his mortal isolation, considerate of other men's fate and a great diviner of their secret, so that his work speaks to them kindly, with a deeper assurance than they could have spoken with to themselves.
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It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
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It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.
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