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The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey.

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
Life
Prefers
Drown
Sweetness
Honey
Pleasure
May
Long

More quotes by George Santayana

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A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
George Santayana
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Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.
George Santayana
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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
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People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.
George Santayana
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Lovely promise and quick ruin are seen nowhere better than in Gothic architecture.
George Santayana
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All language is rhetorical, and even the senses are poets.
George Santayana
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The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.
George Santayana
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Man's most serious activity is play.
George Santayana
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For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing.
George Santayana
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Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude itself is, in one sense, overcome.
George Santayana
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A buoyant and full-blooded soul has quick senses and miscellaneous sympathies: it changes with the changing world and when not too much starved or thwarted by circumstances, it finds all things vivid and comic. Life is free play fundamentally and would like to be free play altogether.
George Santayana
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O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.
George Santayana
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Fear first created the gods.
George Santayana
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Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience - the union of life and peace.
George Santayana
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The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.
George Santayana
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It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
George Santayana
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Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.
George Santayana
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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 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
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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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Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway
George Santayana