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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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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
Individual
Justified
Spirit
Accident
Form
Bars
Must
Accidents
Forms
Conscience
Justice
Society
Morally

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Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.
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I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me.
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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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Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
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Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.
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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 there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
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The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all existence.
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A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
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What better comfort have we, or what other Profit in living Than to feed, sobered by the truth of Nature, Awhile upon her beauty, And hand her torch of gladness to the ages Following after?
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It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.
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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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The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about.
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The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
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Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.
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Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.
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The habit of looking for beauty in everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things, our sense, hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.
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To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
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Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.
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The arts must study their occasions they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life.
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It is wisdom to believe the heart.
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