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Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
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
Wisdom
Entirely
Almost
Opposite
Notoriously
Less
Opposites
Proverbs
Truth
However
Quotations
Every
Balance
Applied
Depends
Occasion
Saying
Depend
Wise
Occasions
More quotes by George Santayana
Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
George Santayana
Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.
George Santayana
Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.
George Santayana
Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost.
George Santayana
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
Heaven is to be at peace with things.
George Santayana
An ideal cannot wait for its realization to prove its validity.
George Santayana
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
Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.
George Santayana
A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary.
George Santayana
Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that to discover what it is that you secretly love.
George Santayana
Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention.
George Santayana
Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.
George Santayana
It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.
George Santayana
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
George Santayana
O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.
George Santayana
The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.
George Santayana
In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.
George Santayana
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
George Santayana
A country without a memory is a country of madmen.
George Santayana
