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Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.

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
Firsts
Trifles
First
Boston
Always
Principal
Busy
Intellectual
Cities
Principles
Applying
Moral
Nursery

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Fear first created the gods.
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The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.
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We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.
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The profoundest affinities are those most readily felt, and though a thousand later considerations may overlay and override them, they remain a background and standard for all happiness. If we trace them out we succeed.
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I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me.
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Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.
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The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey.
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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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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.
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Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
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The soul, too has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.
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Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.
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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 word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
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Music is essentially useless, as life is but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
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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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Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source.
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Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
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Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.
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