Quote

To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.

George Santayana

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Turn
Literature
Turns
Ideas
Function
Events

More quotes by George Santayana

Image
It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.
George Santayana
Image
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned
George Santayana
Image
Men have always been the victims of trifles, but when they were uncomfortable and passionate, and in constant danger, they hardly had time to notice what the daily texture of their thoughts was in their calm intervals, whereas with us the intervals are all.
George Santayana
Image
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Image
Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention.
George Santayana
Image
It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.
George Santayana
Image
In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.
George Santayana
Image
It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
George Santayana
Image
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
George Santayana
Image
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.
George Santayana
Image
Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.
George Santayana
Image
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.
George Santayana
Image
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Image
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.
George Santayana
Image
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.
George Santayana
Image
The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.
George Santayana
Image
The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder.
George Santayana
Image
An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
George Santayana
Image
Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.
George Santayana
Image
All language is rhetorical, and even the senses are poets.
George Santayana