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Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.

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
Thinking
Madness
Thinks
Normal
Nation
Imbecility
Passion
Requisite
Nations
Calls
Less
Folly
Every
Fancy

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The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
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The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
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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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Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events.
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With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.
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The aim of education is the condition of suspended judgment on everything.
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It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.
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The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.
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Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification.
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Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
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It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior.
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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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Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.
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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.
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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.
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Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
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The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive
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The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour.
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