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The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.
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
Provoking
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Meaning
Works
Nature
Firsts
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Commentary
More quotes by George Santayana
Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.
George Santayana
The wonder of an artist's performance grows with the range of his penetration, with the instinctive sympathy that makes him, in his mortal isolation, considerate of other men's fate and a great diviner of their secret, so that his work speaks to them kindly, with a deeper assurance than they could have spoken with to themselves.
George Santayana
To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.
George Santayana
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
George Santayana
It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods.
George Santayana
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
The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.
George Santayana
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument its function is to make the worse appear the better.
George Santayana
The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey.
George Santayana
A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption it is not a symbol, but a fraud.
George Santayana
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
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 body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit.
George Santayana
Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.
George Santayana
Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.
George Santayana
An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
George Santayana
Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.
George Santayana
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
Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.
George Santayana
In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.
George Santayana
