The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk. George Santayana More Quotes by George Santayana More Quotes From George Santayana Habit is stronger than reason. George Santayana strongeropinionsmoking Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention. George Santayana familiarity-breeds-contemptinattentioncontempt Even under the most favorable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its center. George Santayana mortalstruthcircumstances The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity. George Santayana christianideasjesus Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous. George Santayana ridiculousmenheaven Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge. George Santayana confidenceselfknowledge The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is queen, infinite fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice. George Santayana passionqueensart To be bewitched is not to be saved, though all the magicians and aesthetes in the world should pronounce it to be so. George Santayana spiritualityshouldworld My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable. George Santayana historical-novelscharacterpast The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything. George Santayana horsefocusmind The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder. George Santayana lightningbattleclouds Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity. George Santayana madnesswonderfulinsanity The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character. George Santayana charactermenphilosophy The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. George Santayana ignoranceexpressionanimal Prayer is not a substitute for work; it is an effort to work further and be efficient beyond the range of one's powers. George Santayana rangeeffortprayer The Soul is the voice of the body's interests. George Santayana voicebodysoul Columbus found a world, and had no chart save one that Faith deciphered in the skies. George Santayana faithskyworld History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion. George Santayana kingshistoryinteresting Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway George Santayana instinctintuitionreason Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on. George Santayana aircloudswind
