George Santayana

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself.

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence.

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

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.

We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.

What is false in the science of facts may be true in the science of values.

Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their own sake are their own justification.

Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination.

It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man’s wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility.

Artists have no less talents than ever; their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.

The truth, my friends, is not eloquent, except unspoken; its vast shadow lends eloquence to our sparks of thought as they die into it.

Even under the most favourable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its centre.

The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral

We go right enough, darling, if we go wrong together!

Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.

Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful.

There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.

Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

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

All spiritual interests are supported by animal life.

You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and to re-establish themselves alone.

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

If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.

It is a new1 road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.

Assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.