Quote

Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.

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
Religion
Convention
Comes
Conventions
Must
Poetic
Heart
Closer
Work
Patience
Things
Endure
Men
Indeed
Motley
Opinion
Bred

More quotes by George Santayana

Image
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.
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
To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth ... these refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind.
George Santayana
Image
Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt.
George Santayana
Image
Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.
George Santayana
Image
Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.
George Santayana
Image
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.
George Santayana
Image
The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence
George Santayana
Image
Music contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies.
George Santayana
Image
Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.
George Santayana
Image
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
George Santayana
Image
Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.
George Santayana
Image
. . . 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.
George Santayana
Image
Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.
George Santayana
Image
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument its function is to make the worse appear the better.
George Santayana
Image
Man is as full of potential as he is of importance.
George Santayana
Image
It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.
George Santayana
Image
To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career.
George Santayana
Image
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
George Santayana
Image
The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
George Santayana