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. - George Santayana
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved and it makes free those who love it. - George Santayana
Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence. - George Santayana
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. - George Santayana
The muffled syllables that Nature speaksFill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,She makes a sweeter music than is heard. - George Santayana
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. - George Santayana
Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, not condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion. - George Santayana
The family is one of nature's masterpieces. - George Santayana
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it. - George Santayana
A child only educated at school is an uneducated child. - George Santayana
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation. - George Santayana
love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers. - George Santayana
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval - George Santayana
The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity. - George Santayana
The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns. - George Santayana
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment. - George Santayana
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one’s life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted. - George Santayana
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. - George Santayana
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. - George Santayana
Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabline it to make its peace with its destiny. - George Santayana
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood. - George Santayana
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool. - George Santayana
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. - George Santayana
Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve. - George Santayana
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said. - George Santayana
The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive. - George Santayana
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him. - George Santayana
The wisest mind hath something yet to learn. - George Santayana
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily. - George Santayana
Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject. - George Santayana
Life is not a spectacle or a feast: it is a predicament. - George Santayana
The earth has its music for those who will listen. - George Santayana
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better. - George Santayana
It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas. - George Santayana
Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it. - George Santayana
Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be. - George Santayana
America is a young country with an old mentality. - George Santayana
Life is not a spectacle or feast; it is a predicament. - George Santayana
The man who is not permitted to own is owned. - George Santayana
Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel. - George Santayana
Sanity is a madness put to good use. - George Santayana
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. - George Santayana
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated. - George Santayana
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. - George Santayana
The worship of power is an old religion. - George Santayana
The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. - George Santayana
If one is the master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time insight into and understanding of many things. - George Santayana
There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor. - George Santayana
Music is essentially useless, as life is. - George Santayana
To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world. - George Santayana
Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character. - George Santayana
We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what. - George Santayana
The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise. - George Santayana
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences. - George Santayana
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned. - George Santayana
People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious that that they are true. - George Santayana
The wisest mind has something yet to learn. - George Santayana
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. - George Santayana
Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together. - George Santayana
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality. - George Santayana
Depression is rage spread thin. - George Santayana
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana
A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. - George Santayana
Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy. On the contrary, in friendship union is more about ideal things: and in that sense it is more ideal and less subject to trouble than marriage is. - George Santayana
Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions. - George Santayana
Society is like the air; necessary to breathe, but insufficient to live on. - George Santayana