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
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.
The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about.
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.
It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to.
Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.
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