It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Emotion is often linked to nothing tangible, yet it holds great significance in our lives.
George Santayana's quote suggests that emotions, while they may seem to arise from nothing concrete, play a vital role in our human experience. He emphasizes that much of what we feel may not have clear reasons or significance, yet these emotions are essential to understanding ourselves and navigating life.
Themes
EmotionPhilosophyFeelingsHuman ExperienceSelf-Discovery
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on mental health, you could use this quote to illustrate the complex nature of emotions.
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
This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
Franklin D. RooseveltRead
Proportion thy charity to the strength of thine estate, lest God proportion thine estate to the weakness of thy charity. Let the lips of the poor be the trumpet of thy gift, lest in seeking applause, thou lose thy reward. Nothing is more pleasing to God than an open hand and a closed mouth.
Francis QuarlesRead
Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before.
Norman MailerRead
...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.
Thomas HardyRead
If our lives do not reflect radical compassion for the poor, there is reason to wonder if Christ is really in us at all
David PlattRead
The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."
James Branch CabellRead