Quotes by "George Santayana"

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

Happiness is the only sanction in life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway.

It is wisdom to believe the heart.

There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.

By nature's kindly disposition, most questions which it is beyond man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are content to repeat it.

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

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

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.

Wisdom lies in voluntary finitude and a timely change of heart: until maturity, multiplying the inclusions, up to the limit of natural faculty and moral harmony; afterwards, gladly relinquishing zone after zone of vegetation, and letting the snow-peak of integrity rise to what height it may.

The worship of power is an old religion.

With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.

To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.