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Lovely promise and quick ruin are seen nowhere better than in Gothic architecture.

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
Better
Ruin
Nowhere
Quick
Ruins
Architecture
Lovely
Promise
Seen
Gothic

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Art is a delayed echo.
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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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What is false in the science of facts may be true in the science of values.
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The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.... If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror and amusement, so magnificent is the spirit.
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The soul, too has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.
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America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
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The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.
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. . . until the curtain was rung down on the last act of the drama (and it might have no last act!) he wished the intellectual cripples and the moral hunchbacks not to be jeered at perhaps they might turn out to be the heroes of the play.
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Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.
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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.
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Perhaps the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies.
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Repetition is the only form of permanence that Nature can achieve.
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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.
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The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations.
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To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.
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I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
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The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
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The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.
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The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.
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If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
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