Quote

It is in rare and scattered instants that beauty smiles even on her adorers, who are reduced for habitual comfort to remembering her past favours.

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
Reduced
Rare
Instants
Instant
Favours
Comfort
Scattered
Beauty
Habitual
Past
Smiles
Remember
Remembering
Even
Favour

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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.
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Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age
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I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
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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.
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There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
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What is false in the science of facts may be true in the science of values.
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Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
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There is nothing sacred about convention there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.
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The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
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Life is judged with all the blindness of life itself.
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Nature is like a beautiful woman that may be as delightfully and as truly known at a certain distance as upon a closer view as to knowing her through and through that is nonsense in both cases, and might not reward our pains.
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It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
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The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey.
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Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.
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Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
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There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.
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An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
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Repetition is the only form of permanence that Nature can achieve.
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Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.
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A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or as the consciousness of a right life, can quicken us from within.
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