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There is nothing sacred about convention there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.
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
Tradition
Convention
Capable
Maintaining
Passion
Conventions
Fact
Customs
Living
Primitive
Whims
Facts
Passions
Devised
Nothing
Exists
Indicates
Way
Sacred
Whim
More quotes by George Santayana
Old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.
George Santayana
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.
George Santayana
A friend's only gift is himself.
George Santayana
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
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Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
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The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
George Santayana
A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit.
George Santayana
The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about.
George Santayana
Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
George Santayana
Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.
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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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To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth ... these refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind.
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Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things.
George Santayana
The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.
George Santayana
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
George Santayana
Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.
George Santayana
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Columbus gave the world another world.
George Santayana
In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.
George Santayana