Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
George Santayana
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Words
Ideal
May
Chosen
Best
Express
Whole
Fully
Straining
Life
Ideals
Dominates
Towards
Latent
Evolution
Definite
Progress
Vital
More quotes by George Santayana
Fear first created the gods.
George Santayana
Heaven is to be at peace with things.
George Santayana
Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.
George Santayana
It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.
George Santayana
A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.
George Santayana
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
Nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and as truly known at a certain distance as upon a closer view as to knowing her through and through that is nonsense in both cases, and might not reward our pains.
George Santayana
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
George Santayana
Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.
George Santayana
My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.
George Santayana
Docility is the observable half of reason.
George Santayana
If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
George Santayana
Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.
George Santayana
Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.
George Santayana
He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.
George Santayana
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.
George Santayana
The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.... If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror and amusement, so magnificent is the spirit.
George Santayana
The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.
George Santayana
Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt.
George Santayana
Imagination is potentially infinite. Though actually we are limited to the types of experience for which we possess organs, those organs are somewhat plastic. Opportunity will change their scope and even their center.
George Santayana
