Quote

To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth ... these refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind.

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
Truth
Part
Refusals
Better
Boosted
Live
Decayed
Mind
Infection
Really
Refusal
Harmony
Illusion

More quotes by George Santayana

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A friend's only gift is himself.
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We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.
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Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.
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What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude : the aims of friendship , religion , science , and art .
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Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.
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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
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Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
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The aim of education is the condition of suspended judgment on everything.
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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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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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Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.
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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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The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.
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A way foolishness has of revenging itself is to excommunicate the world.
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Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.
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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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For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned
George Santayana
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Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.
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O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.
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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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