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Spirit itself is not human it may spring up in any life... it may exist in all animals, and who know in how many undreamt-of beings, or in the midst of what worlds?

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
Animal
Spirit
Worlds
May
Midst
Human
Spirituality
Humans
Animals
Many
Spring
Life
Exist
World
Beings

More quotes by George Santayana

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The truth properly means the sum of all true propositions, what omniscience would assert, the whole ideal system of qualities andrelations which the world has exemplified or will exemplify. The truth is all things seen under the form of eternity.
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History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
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A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.
George Santayana
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Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.
George Santayana
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Music is essentially useless, as is life.
George Santayana
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To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth ... these refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind.
George Santayana
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Order, for a liberal, means only peace and the hope of a profound peace was one of the chief motives in the liberal movement. Concessions and tolerance and equality would thus have really led to peace, and to peace of the most radical kind, the peace of moral extinction.
George Santayana
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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.
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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.
George Santayana
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Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway
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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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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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.
George Santayana
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We are not compelled in naturalism, or even in materialism, to ignore immaterial things the point is that any immaterial things which are recognized shall be regarded as names, aspects, functions, or concomitant products of those physical things among which action goes on.
George Santayana
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What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word--the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, making a man rub his eyes in his waking dream, and put two and two together. Enlightenment is cold water.
George Santayana
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A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary.
George Santayana
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Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.
George Santayana
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Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
George Santayana
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Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
George Santayana
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Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.
George Santayana