Quote

Our character ... is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

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
Nobler
Simpler
Likely
Integrity
Army
Destiny
Keep
Character
Omen

More quotes by George Santayana

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There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
George Santayana
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A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.
George Santayana
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History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
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To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
George Santayana
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Spirit itself is not human it may spring up in any life... it may exist in all animals, and who know in how many undreamt-of beings, or in the midst of what worlds?
George Santayana
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America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
George Santayana
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The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.
George Santayana
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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.
George Santayana
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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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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.
George Santayana
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The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.
George Santayana
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Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
George Santayana
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When a man's life is over, it remains true that he was one sort of man and not another. A man who understands himself under the form of eternity knows the quality that eternally belongs to him, and knows that he cannot wholly die, even if he would, for when the movement of his life is over, the truth of his life remains.
George Santayana
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The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
George Santayana
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Sanctity and genius are as rebellious as vice.
George Santayana
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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.
George Santayana
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To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
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
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America is a young country with an old mentality.
George Santayana
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Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
George Santayana