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In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.

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
Unexpected
Philosophical
Familiar
Minds
Wonder
Also
Thing
Excites
Mind
Rare

More quotes by George Santayana

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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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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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Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.
George Santayana
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Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.
George Santayana
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The world is not respectable it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.
George Santayana
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History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
George Santayana
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The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.
George Santayana
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It is wisdom to believe the heart.
George Santayana
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To fight is a radical instinct if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions.
George Santayana
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Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
George Santayana
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Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
George Santayana
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Memory itself is an internal rumour.
George Santayana
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The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them
George Santayana
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The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
George Santayana
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Heaven is to be at peace with things.
George Santayana
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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.
George Santayana
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Beware of long arguments and long beards.
George Santayana
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There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
George Santayana
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I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world.
George Santayana
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Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.
George Santayana