Quote

If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.

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
Decent
Prefer
Lurch
Illusion
Eluded
Mere
Funk
Left
Illusions
Else
Realities
Reality
Hypocrisy
World
Contempt

More quotes by George Santayana

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Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway
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Towers in a modern town are a frill and a survival they seem like the raised hands of the various churches, afraid of being overlooked, and saying to the forgetful public, Here I am! Or perhaps they are rival lightning rods, saying to the emanations of divine grace, Please strike here!
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Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.
George Santayana
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The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
George Santayana
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Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.
George Santayana
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Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts.
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Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
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America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
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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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A way foolishness has of revenging itself is to excommunicate the world.
George Santayana
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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.
George Santayana
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I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
George Santayana
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For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned
George Santayana
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Beauty is objectified pleasure.
George Santayana
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The soul, too has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.
George Santayana
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The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.
George Santayana
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If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
George Santayana
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There must ... be in our very nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the principles of the mind can be at all adequate that passes over so conspicuous a faculty.
George Santayana
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Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.
George Santayana
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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.
George Santayana