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The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.

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
Mediocrity
Intellectual
Simply
Today
Live
Everything
Great
Slums
World
Appalling

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A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit.
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Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
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Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself.
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why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.
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To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.
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The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
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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.
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American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.
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Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.
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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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To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
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To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation to elude oneself is the romantic.
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Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center.
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The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
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