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
Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
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?
Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age
The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive
Even the most inspired verse, which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal, becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic; the language it was written in dies, a learned education and an imaginative effort are requisite to catch even a vestige of its original force. Nothing is so irrevocable as mind.
The tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and humane reflection: it is scholastic and proper to the Middle Ages and to Germany.
England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies, and humors
England is not the best possible world but it is the best actual country, and a great rest after America
Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.
Sanity is a madness put to good uses
Sanity is a madness put to good use.
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine then out of a prig
Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise
Love makes us poets, and the approach of death should makes us philosophers