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
Sanity is a madness put to good uses
Music is essentially useless, as is life.
The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.
The only kind of reform usually possible is reform from within; a more intimate study and more intelligent use of the traditional forms.
Sanity is madness put to good use.
To condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are useless for self-preservation shows an uncritical prizing of life irrespective of its content.
Music is essentially useless, as life is; but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
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 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