Quote

Men have always been the victims of trifles, but when they were uncomfortable and passionate, and in constant danger, they hardly had time to notice what the daily texture of their thoughts was in their calm intervals, whereas with us the intervals are all.

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
Constant
Whereas
Danger
Hardly
Thoughts
Notice
Peace
Uncomfortable
Always
Victim
Intervals
Men
Daily
Trifles
Time
Calm
Texture
Passionate
Victims

More quotes by George Santayana

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Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.
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To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.
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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.
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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.
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We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.
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Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.
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Docility is the observable half of reason.
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What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude : the aims of friendship , religion , science , and art .
George Santayana
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The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts the feminine is queen, infinite fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.
George Santayana
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Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.
George Santayana
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A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.
George Santayana
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The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive
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The profoundest affinities are those most readily felt, and though a thousand later considerations may overlay and override them, they remain a background and standard for all happiness. If we trace them out we succeed.
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In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.
George Santayana
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The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.
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One real world is enough.
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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.
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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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To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
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Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
George Santayana