Quote

Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention.

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
Breeds
Familiarity
Contempt
Inattention

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Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.
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Reason and happiness are like other flowers they wither when plucked.
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We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.
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Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.
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The truth properly means the sum of all true propositions, what omniscience would assert, the whole ideal system of qualities andrelations which the world has exemplified or will exemplify. The truth is all things seen under the form of eternity.
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Heaven is to be at peace with things.
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The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about.
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It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.
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Old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.
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Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
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America is a young country with an old mentality.
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Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
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Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude itself is, in one sense, overcome.
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To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
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Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.
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If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.
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If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
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Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events.
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There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.
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It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.
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