It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Artists and poets might experience unhappiness because they seek deeper truths rather than mere happiness.
This quote by George Santayana suggests that the pursuit of happiness is not a priority for artists and poets, who are often more interested in exploring complex emotions and the human condition. For them, the deeper, often darker aspects of life provide greater inspiration and artistic material than mere joy or contentment. Thus, their unhappiness is not a failure but rather a reflection of their commitment to exploring profound themes.
Themes
UnhappinessArtPoetryTruthEmotions
In practice
Example use cases
In a gallery opening speech to highlight the deeper emotional journeys of the artists.
More from George Santayana
All quotes βThe working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
George SantayanaRead
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.
George SantayanaRead
Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.
George SantayanaRead
To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
George SantayanaRead
The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
George SantayanaRead
Similar quotes
For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.... I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.
Margaret AtwoodRead
I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.
Dizzy GillespieRead
I work for ABC. If the thing that ABC is paying me for is storytelling - not to make sure that a costume is exactly right or all those other things - then it is up to me to find the most creative space possible so that that function of my job can happen.
Shonda RhimesRead
I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can't possess radiance, you can only admire it.
Elizabeth TaylorRead
People do not come to a Penn & Teller show to see a magic show. They just don't. They come to see weird stuff that they can see no place else, that will make them laugh and make the little hairs stand up on the backs of their necks.
TellerRead
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.
John BergerRead