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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

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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
Latent
Towards
Definite
Evolution
Vital
Progress
Ideal
Words
May
Chosen
Best
Express
Straining
Whole
Fully
Dominates
Life
Ideals

More quotes by George Santayana

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Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.
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. . . until the curtain was rung down on the last act of the drama (and it might have no last act!) he wished the intellectual cripples and the moral hunchbacks not to be jeered at perhaps they might turn out to be the heroes of the play.
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Wisdom comes from disillusionment.
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Perhaps the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies.
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The aim of education is the condition of suspended judgment on everything.
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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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One real world is enough.
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 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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An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
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Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.
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Lovely promise and quick ruin are seen nowhere better than in Gothic architecture.
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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 tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.
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Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana
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Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.
George Santayana
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The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
George Santayana
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The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
George Santayana
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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?
George Santayana
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Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.
George Santayana
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The world is not respectable it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.
George Santayana