Quotes from George Santayana

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 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.

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

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

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

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

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 enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

A child only educated at school is an uneducated child.

A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.

All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.

America is a young country with an old mentality.

America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.

Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.

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

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

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.

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.

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

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.

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

Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love.

Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves.

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