George Santayana
George Santayana
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Originally from Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always kept a valid Spanish passport. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth16 December 1863
CityMadrid, Spain
CountrySpain
George Santayana quotes about
Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.
Docility is the observable half of reason.
Philosophers are as jealous as woman; each wants a monopoly of praise.
Nature in denying us perennial youth has at least invited us to become unselfish and noble.
Philosophy may describe unreasoning, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to refute them.
Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source.
You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.
Reason in my philosophy is only a harmony among irrational impulses.
To be bewitched is not to be saved, though all the magicians and aesthetes in the world should pronounce it to be so.
A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.
All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.