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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
Facts
Passions
Devised
Nothing
Exists
Indicates
Way
Sacred
Whim
Tradition
Convention
Capable
Maintaining
Passion
Conventions
Fact
Customs
Living
Primitive
Whims

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With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.
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O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.
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Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.
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The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
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To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
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Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
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Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost.
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To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
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Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience - the union of life and peace.
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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.
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The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.
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Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
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Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself.
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Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.
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In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.
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We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.
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It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.
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All language is rhetorical, and even the senses are poets.
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The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.
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The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them
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