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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

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The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.
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In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.
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Oaths are the fossils of piety.
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Men have always been the victims of trifles, but when they were uncomfortable and passionate, and in constant danger, they hardly had time to notice what the daily texture of their thoughts was in their calm intervals, whereas with us the intervals are all.
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Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
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Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.
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.
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Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.
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It is wisdom to believe the heart.
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Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.
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Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.
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Does the thoughtful man suppose that...the present experiment in civilization is the last world we will see?
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Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
George Santayana
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Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.
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There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.
George Santayana
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To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
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The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
George Santayana
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Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself.
George Santayana
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It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.
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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