George Santayana — Philosophical Quotes

188 quotes · Philosopher, Poet

Page 12 of 16

George Santayana Quotes

All Philosophical Wise Creative Spiritual Love 188 quotes · page 12 of 16

George Santayana

Philosopher, Poet

Philosophical

“Even the most inspired verse, which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal, becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic; the language it was written in dies, a learned education and an imaginative effort are requisite to catch even a vestige of its original force. Nothing is so irrevocable as mind.”

Mind Age Effort

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George Santayana

Philosopher, Poet

Philosophical

“Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.”

Passion Knowing Religion

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Philosophical

“A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.”

Dream Reflection

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Philosophical

“Reason and happiness are like other flowers; they wither when plucked.”

Flower Reason

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Philosophical

“There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.”

Men Drink Reconcile

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Philosophical

“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.”

Animal Expression Ignorance

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Philosophical

“Reason in my philosophy is only a harmony among irrational impulses.”

Philosophy Peace

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Philosophical

“To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.”

Ideas Literature

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Philosophical

“Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that to discover what it is that you secretly love.”

Self Hate Rejection

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Philosophical

“The combative instinct is a savage prompting by which one man's good is found in another's evil.”

Men Evil Savages

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Philosophical

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

Thousand Shells

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Philosophical

“Nothing is so irrevocable as mind.”

Mind Knowledge

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