Quote

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

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
Change
Insight
Remember
Advice
Depends
Progress
Consisting
Memories
Infancy
Wisdom
Condemned
Cannot
Repeat
Past
Repeats

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In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.
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The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.
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Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.
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Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.
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The earth has music for those who listen.
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The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
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A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption it is not a symbol, but a fraud.
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Reason and happiness are like other flowers they wither when plucked.
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Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.
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The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.
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The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.
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Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.
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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.
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A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
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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.
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Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
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I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me.
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History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
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