Quotes By George Santayana

Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.

Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art.

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

Music is essentially useless, as is life.

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.

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.

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.

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.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

Sanity is madness put to good use.

The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.

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

America is a young country with an old mentality.

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

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

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

Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.

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

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

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

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.