~ George Santayana Quotes ~

[MysteRy]

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

[MysteRy]

Science is nothing but developed perception interpreted intent common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

[MysteRy]

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

[MysteRy]

It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility.

[MysteRy]

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

[MysteRy]

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

[MysteRy]

I believe in the possibility of happiness if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions including optimism.

[MysteRy]

Progress far from consisting in change depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are content to repeat it.

[MysteRy]

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

[MysteRy]

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium of custom of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

[MysteRy]

My atheism like that of Spinoza is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.

[MysteRy]

If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.

[MysteRy]

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.

[MysteRy]

The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.

[MysteRy]

There is nothing sacred about convention; there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims; but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.