Quotes By George Santayana

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.

The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others.

It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.

Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.

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

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

To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

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

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.

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

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

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.

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.

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.

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.