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
Every real object must cease to be what it seemed, and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.
A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary.
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.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.
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.
We do right enough darling, if we go wrong together.
Mortality has its compensations; one is that all evils are transitory, another that better times may come.
Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.
All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man's natural sentiment in the face of death.
Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification.
A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me.
Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.