Quote

The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.

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
Memories
Superiority
Present
Distant
Pleasure
Pleasures
Felt
Compared
Time
Dues
Variety
Mass
Poverty
Suggested

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The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.
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People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.
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The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence
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To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
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There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.
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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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Music is essentially useless, as is life.
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There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
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Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.
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To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.
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A simple life is its own reward.
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Perhaps the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies.
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Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable what it is or what it means can never be said.
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Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.
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The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.
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The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
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Music contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies.
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Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid.
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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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