Explore Quotes by George Santayana

To reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of this act are not always equally intended nor equally successful.

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.

The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.

If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.