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
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.
Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things.
Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.
Nothing is so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject
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
As man is now constituted, to be brief is almost a condition of being inspired
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.
Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise
Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence
Love makes us poets, and the approach of death should makes us philosophers
Love is only half the illusion; the lover, but not his love, is deceived.