The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal. George Santayana More Quotes by George Santayana More Quotes From George Santayana The profoundest affinities are those most readily felt, and though a thousand later considerations may overlay and override them, they remain a background and standard for all happiness. If we trace them out we succeed. George Santayana succeed success happiness One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye. George Santayana bye america ideas A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. George Santayana freedom judging men Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean. George Santayana profound mean culture The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity. George Santayana degrees imagination reality Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that 'a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.' At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them. George Santayana god men philosophy It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas. George Santayana stupid brain ideas 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? George Santayana environmental age hands The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape. George Santayana irrational apes terrible The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. George Santayana exercise people thinking It is in rare and scattered instants that beauty smiles even on her adorers, who are reduced for habitual comfort to remembering her past favours. George Santayana comfort beauty past ... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives are mortal if our soul is not; and the sentiment which reconciled Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as if we are to face only one. George Santayana immortality soul faces Work and love these are the basics; waking life is a dream controlled. George Santayana waking-life and-love dream Men have always been the victims of trifles, but when they were uncomfortable and passionate, and in constant danger, they hardly had time to notice what the daily texture of their thoughts was in their calm intervals, whereas with us the intervals are all. George Santayana passionate men peace The wonder of an artist's performance grows with the range of his penetration, with the instinctive sympathy that makes him, in his mortal isolation, considerate of other men's fate and a great diviner of their secret, so that his work speaks to them kindly, with a deeper assurance than they could have spoken with to themselves. George Santayana fate artist men The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others. George Santayana rational institutions suffering A buoyant and full-blooded soul has quick senses and miscellaneous sympathies: it changes with the changing world; and when not too much starved or thwarted by circumstances, it finds all things vivid and comic. Life is free play fundamentally and would like to be free play altogether. George Santayana soul play world Those who cannot remember the pastare condemned to repeat it. or: Those who have never heard of good system development practice are condemned to reinvent it. George Santayana development practice past It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior. George Santayana men war blood The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke. George Santayana provoking nature firsts
