QuoteProject
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 Santayana
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Appreciating beauty and imagination surpasses mere scientific understanding.

This quote emphasizes the idea that feeling and experiencing beauty, as well as cultivating imagination and aesthetic taste, hold greater value than simply understanding the scientific or rational explanations behind those feelings. It suggests that the subjective experience of beauty can lead to a deeper, more profound connection to ideals and nature, which transcends the limitations of scientific analysis.

Themes

BeautyImaginationArtScienceNature

In practice

Example use cases

In an art class to inspire students about the importance of feeling art rather than just analyzing it.

More from George Santayana

It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
The 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
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
All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
George SantayanaRead

Similar quotes

Quite frankly, I didn't become an actor to become a movie star. I have never dreamed about being the most famous person on the planet. I just want to do really good work.
Anne HathawayRead
Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel.
Edward HirschRead
The non-artists among us are always terribly busy, but finally disappear without a trace.
Helen VendlerRead
By coincidence and not design, 'Everstar' is written and drawn by an all-female creative team, and it makes me smile to think that there may be young female readers out there, future writers and artists, who get to see that comics doesn't have to be a 'boys' club.'
Mark WaidRead
Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.
Jimmy PageRead
A creative mess is better than idle tidiness.
Michael J. FoxRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.