George Santayana Quotes — Page 25

Philosopher, Poet

Spiritual

“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.”

Spirit Speak Longing

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George Santayana

Philosopher, Poet

Spiritual

“There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable.”

Impossible Seems Existence

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Philosophical

“Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.”

May Different Knowledge

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Philosophical

“He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.”

Thinking Believe Vision

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Philosophical

“The same battle in the clouds will be known to the deaf only as lightning and to the blind only as thunder.”

Battle Clouds Lightning

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Calm

“In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.”

Passion Recognition Contemplation

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Confident

“A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.”

Men Character Greatness

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Philosophical

“Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length.”

Vision Arms Echoes

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Nostalgic

“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.”

Character Past Historical Novels

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Philosophical

“Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire.”

War Buddhism Ambition

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Philosophical

“There are three traps that strangle philosophy: The church, the marriage bed, and the professor's chair.”

Philosophy Church Bed

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Philosophical

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

Firsts God Atheism

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