74 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 on faith

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
George Santayana on family

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.
George Santayana on fear

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
George Santayana on friendship

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another people are friends in spots.
George Santayana on friendship

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.
George Santayana on future

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
George Santayana on great

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.
George Santayana on happiness

Happiness is the only sanction of life where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
George Santayana on happiness

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
George Santayana on happiness

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana on happiness

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana on history

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
George Santayana on history

Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.
George Santayana on hope

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity.
George Santayana on imagination

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.
George Santayana on intelligence

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 on knowledge

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana on knowledge

Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.
George Santayana on knowledge

Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.
George Santayana on life