Quotes from George Santayana

Love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable: namely, that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces into the light of ideal goods.

Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that to discover what it is that you secretly love.

To reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of this act are not always equally intended nor equally successful.

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.

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

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends.

To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth ... these refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind.

What better comfort have we, or what other Profit in living Than to feed, sobered by the truth of Nature, Awhile upon her beauty, And hand her torch of gladness to the ages Following after?

The truth is cruel but it can be loved and it makes free those who have loved it.

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.

Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.

Children are natural mythologists: they beg to be told tales, and love not only to invent but to enact falsehoods.

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

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

Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise.

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

America is a young country with an old mentality.

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

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Boston is a moral and intellectual nursery always busy applying first principles to trifles.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.