George Santayana
George Santayana
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Originally from Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always kept a valid Spanish passport. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth16 December 1863
CityMadrid, Spain
CountrySpain
Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself.
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.
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.
The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old fashioned
The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.
The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.
It is wisdom to believe the heart.
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.
Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.
The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.
There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable.
The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend.