"If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved."

Santayana, George on pain
5 fans of this quote   

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"Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality."

Santayana, George on parents and parenting   

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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Santayana, George on past
6 fans of this quote   

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"A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world."

Santayana, George on patriotism
3 fans of this quote   

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"The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal."

Santayana, George on art   

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"Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions."

Santayana, George on possessions   

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"Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end."

Santayana, George on prayer   

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"Man is as full of potential as he is of importance."

Santayana, George on potential   

"The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age."

Santayana, George on pride   

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"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."

Santayana, George on progress   

"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."

Santayana, George on proverbs
3 fans of this quote   

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"By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all."

Santayana, George on questions
3 fans of this quote   

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"The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape."

Santayana, George on reason   

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"Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it."

Santayana, George on sacrifice   

"It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig."

Santayana, George on saints
3 fans of this quote   

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"Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled."

Santayana, George on sanity   

"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated."

Santayana, George on science   

"To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."

Santayana, George on seasons   

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"Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect."

Santayana, George on skepticism   

"There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far."

Santayana, George on skepticism   

"The empiricist... thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing."

Santayana, George on skepticism   

"Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on."

Santayana, George on society   

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"The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine."

Santayana, George on space   

"The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication."

Santayana, George on spirituality   

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"Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said."

Santayana, George on beauty   

"The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation."

Santayana, George on body   

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"Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds."

Santayana, George on chaos
4 fans of this quote   

"Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character."

Santayana, George on character
3 fans of this quote   

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"Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any."

Santayana, George on superstition   

"Oaths are the fossils of piety."

Santayana, George on swearing   

"There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with."

Santayana, George on sympathy   

"The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form."

Santayana, George on theater   

"A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud."

Santayana, George on theory   

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"All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato."

Santayana, George on thoughts and thinking   

"The little word is has its tragedies: it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger."

Santayana, George on tragedies   

"It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness."

Santayana, George on happiness
4 fans of this quote   

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"To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman."

Santayana, George on war   

"Wisdom comes by disillusionment."

Santayana, George on wisdom
9 fans of this quote   

"The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character."

Santayana, George on wives   

"To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired."

Santayana, George on words