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A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary.

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
Source
Whether
Hangs
Social
Sanctity
Mysticism
Sources
Imaginary
Spirituality
Physical

More quotes by George Santayana

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One real world is enough.
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Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.
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The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence
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The tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and humane reflection: it is scholastic and proper to the Middle Ages and to Germany.
George Santayana
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The earth has music for those who listen.
George Santayana
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Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.
George Santayana
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Habit is stronger than reason.
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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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.
George Santayana
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Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
George Santayana
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In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.
George Santayana
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... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives are mortal if our soul is not and the sentiment which reconciled Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as if we are to face only one.
George Santayana
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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.
George Santayana
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To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
George Santayana
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The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
George Santayana
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The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts the feminine is queen, infinite fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.
George Santayana
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The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
George Santayana
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We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.
George Santayana
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One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.
George Santayana
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Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.
George Santayana