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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

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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
Contemplation
Happy
Passions
Good
Possess
Recognition
Seek
Raised
Passion
Silenced
Beauty

More quotes by George Santayana

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... so in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected it is recognised and obeyed.
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Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification.
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Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
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Advertising is the modern substitute for argument its function is to make the worse appear the better.
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Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.
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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.
George Santayana
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Oaths are the fossils of piety.
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A way foolishness has of revenging itself is to excommunicate the world.
George Santayana
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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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Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.
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Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.
George Santayana
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To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career.
George Santayana
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Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.
George Santayana
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Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
George Santayana
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The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.
George Santayana
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To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.
George Santayana
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Music is essentially useless, as life is but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
George Santayana
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There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
George Santayana
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I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
George Santayana
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Sanctity and genius are as rebellious as vice.
George Santayana