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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.

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
Specific
Attempt
Possible
Religious
Religion
Language
Speak
Practicing
Without
Attempting

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Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.
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. . . until the curtain was rung down on the last act of the drama (and it might have no last act!) he wished the intellectual cripples and the moral hunchbacks not to be jeered at perhaps they might turn out to be the heroes of the play.
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The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence
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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.
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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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Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable what it is or what it means can never be said.
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Man is as full of potential as he is of importance.
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The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
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Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost.
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The earth has music for those who listen.
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The arts must study their occasions they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life.
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Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.
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Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.
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The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive
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There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.
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The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.
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To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
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It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior.
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That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
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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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