Quote

To fight is a radical instinct if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions.

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
Men
Walking
Directions
Fight
Dislike
Fighting
Fancy
Words
Opposite
Else
Radical
Women
Opposites
Nothing
Instinct
Looks
Mets
Fancies

More quotes by George Santayana

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It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.
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It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.
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There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
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Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.
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Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.
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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.
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The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
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Nothing is so irrevocable as mind.
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Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
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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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Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
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Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
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Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.
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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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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.
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Memory itself is an internal rumour.
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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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One real world is enough.
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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 pride of the artisan in his art and its uses is pride in himself...It is in his skill and ability to make things as he wishes them to be that he rejoices.
George Santayana