Quote

Man is a fighting animal his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.

George Santayana

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Banner
Nerve
Nerves
Failure
Thoughts
Animal
Fighting
Ideas
Banners

More quotes by George Santayana

Image
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
George Santayana
Image
Music contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies.
George Santayana
Image
The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.
George Santayana
Image
The world is not respectable it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.
George Santayana
Image
The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive
George Santayana
Image
Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity.
George Santayana
Image
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.
George Santayana
Image
There must ... be in our very nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the principles of the mind can be at all adequate that passes over so conspicuous a faculty.
George Santayana
Image
Beware of long arguments and long beards.
George Santayana
Image
The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.
George Santayana
Image
Prayer is not a substitute for work it is an effort to work further and be efficient beyond the range of one's powers.
George Santayana
Image
To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
George Santayana
Image
Perhaps the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies.
George Santayana
Image
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
Image
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
George Santayana
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.
George Santayana
Image
The world is a perpetual caricature of itself at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.
George Santayana
Image
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.
George Santayana