George Santayana Quotes

"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 in Character quotes.

"Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character."
-George Santayana

"Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world."
-George Santayana in Music quotes.

"The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about."
-George Santayana

"Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions."
-George Santayana in Music quotes.

"America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences."
-George Santayana

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-George Santayana in Past quotes.

"Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel."
-George Santayana in Travel quotes.

"Wisdom comes by disillusionment."
-George Santayana in Wisdom quotes.

"Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him."
-George Santayana in Age quotes.

"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

"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."
-George Santayana in Religion quotes.

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
-George Santayana

"America is a young country with an old mentality."
-George Santayana in America quotes.

"The wisest mind has something yet to learn."
-George Santayana in Wisdom quotes.

"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 young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool."
-George Santayana

"Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men."
-George Santayana in Friendship quotes.

"Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject."
-George Santayana

"Sanity is a madness put to good use."
-George Santayana

"An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world."
-George Santayana

"Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are."
-George Santayana in Intelligence quotes.

"For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned."
-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

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."
-George Santayana in Spring quotes.

"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