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George Santayana

55 quotes

George Santayana (1863–1952) was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist known for his elegant prose and incisive cultural commentary. His famous warning — "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" — is one of the most quoted lines in the English language.

“Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.”

— George Santayana

Experience

All Quotes by George Santayana

“Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.”

— George Santayana

Alone

“The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.”

— George Santayana

Beauty

“To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.”

— George Santayana

Patriotism

“Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.”

— George Santayana

Knowledge

“When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions their reasons are always different.”

— George Santayana

Men

“Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.”

— George Santayana

Happiness

“Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.”

— George Santayana

Experience

“Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.”

— George Santayana

Money

“The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.”

— George Santayana

Art

“To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.”

— George Santayana

Positive

“Music is essentially useless, as is life.”

— George Santayana

Music

“Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another people are friends in spots.”

— George Santayana

Friendship

“An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.”

— George Santayana

Art

“Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.”

— George Santayana

Knowledge

“Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.”

— George Santayana

Courage

“The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.”

— George Santayana

Experience

“It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.”

— George Santayana

Marriage

“Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.”

— George Santayana

Happiness

“The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.”

— George Santayana

Truth

“Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.”

— George Santayana

Experience