It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fashion often leads to unnecessary changes and trends that serve little purpose.
In this quote, George Santayana critiques the nature of fashion, suggesting that it is marked by a lack of reason and true benefit. He implies that while fashion drives innovation, it can often lead to trends that are shallow and merely serve to imitate without providing any real value or substance. This highlights the often superficial and transient nature of fashion in society.
Themes
FashionInnovationImitationArtCritique
In practice
Example use cases
During a fashion lecture, one could use this quote to discuss the implications of trends.
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
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence.
John MiltonRead
All these tales of people sitting down and composing symphonies just as though they were writing a letter are very much exaggerated; at least, it isn't that way in my work.
George GershwinRead
I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.
Anton ChekhovRead
As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.
Henry MillerRead
The writing process for a short story feels more like field geology, where you keep turning the thing over and over, noting its qualities in detail, hammering at it, putting it near flame, pouring different acids on it, and then finally you figure out what it is, or you just give up and mount it on a ring and have an awkward chunky piece of jewelry that seems weirdly dominating but that you for some reason like. I could be wrong about field geology here.
Rivka GalchenRead
The most annoying and full- of- crap thing a writer says is, I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it. A writer without a reader doesn't exist.
Harlan CobenRead