Quotes from George Santayana

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

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

The bible is literature, not dogma.

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.

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

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.

Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.

why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

Work and love these are the basics; waking life is a dream controlled.

The world is so ordered that we must, in a material sense, lose everything we have and love, one thing after another, until we ourselves close our eyes.

The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.

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

We do right enough darling, if we go wrong together.

When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and re-establish themselves alone.

Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.

Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's fine feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life.

... so in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected; it is recognised and obeyed.

The sophisticated concern about art sinks before a spontaneous love of reality, and I thank the photograph for being so transparent a vehicle for things.

Love is at once more animal than friendship and more divine.

A friend's only gift is himself.