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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.
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
Habits
Originally
Opinions
Borrowed
Conscience
Gather
Habit
Comforting
Opinion
Consensus
Social
Assurance
Assurances
Men
Continually
Convention
Conventions
Suggested
More quotes by George Santayana
Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.
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The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy.
George Santayana
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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All language is rhetorical, and even the senses are poets.
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Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.
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Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.
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One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.
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The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.
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The habit of looking for beauty in everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things, our sense, hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.
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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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Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.
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Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.
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It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.
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It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.
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There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.
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Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
George Santayana
Man is a fighting animal his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.
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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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Docility is the observable half of reason.
George Santayana
America is a young country with an old mentality.
George Santayana
