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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
Possess
Recognition
Seek
Raised
Passion
Beauty
Silenced
Happy
Contemplation
Good
Passions
More quotes by George Santayana
There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
George Santayana
Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.
George Santayana
The earth has music for those who listen.
George Santayana
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
Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
George Santayana
One real world is enough.
George Santayana
Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
George Santayana
Man's most serious activity is play.
George Santayana
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
... 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.
George Santayana
To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.
George Santayana
Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost.
George Santayana
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.
George Santayana
Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
George Santayana
Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.
George Santayana
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.
George Santayana
The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
George Santayana
Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.
George Santayana
Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.
George Santayana
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned
George Santayana
