George Santayana

Philosopher

1863-12-16 – 1952-09-25

George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, and poet associated with American and European intellectual life. He is known for works including The Life of Reason and the aphorism about repeating history.

Books by George Santayana

Winds of doctrines
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The sense of beauty
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The United States in Literature [with three long stories] -- Seventh Edition
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Quotes by George Santayana

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
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The more pleasure a universe can yield, other things being equal, the more beneficent and generous is its general nature; the more pains its constitution involves, the darker and more malign its total temper. To deny this would seem impossible, yet it is done daily; for there is nothing people will not maintain when they are slaves to superstition; and candor and a sense of justice are, in such a case, the first things lost.
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Consciousness is a born hermit.
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The earth has its music for those who will listen.
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Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.
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We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.
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Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.
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The muffled syllables that Nature speaksFill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
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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.
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There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval
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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.
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The worship of power is an old religion.
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love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.
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love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.
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There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval
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We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.
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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.
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Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.
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That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
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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.
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