Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, The Sense of Beauty
To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, The Life of Reason
My atheism ... is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, "On My Friendly Critics," Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies
Art like life should be free, since both are experimental.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, The Life of Reason
History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, The Life of Reason
- I leave you but the sound of many a word
- In mocking echoes haply overheard,
- I sang to heaven. My exile made me free,
- from world to world, from all worlds carried me.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, The Poet's Testament
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, The Life of Reason
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, Dialogues in Limbo
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, attributed, Business Wit & Wisdom
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.
What is false in the science of facts may be true in the science of values.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument, its function is to make the worse appear the better article. A confused competition of all propagandas -- those insults to human nature -- is carried on by the most expert psychological methods -- for instance, by always repeating a lie.
