574 Quotes by George Santayana

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions.

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

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

Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.

The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.

It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.

If clearness about things produces a fundamental despair, a fundamental despair in turn produces a remarkable clearness or even playfulness about ordinary matters.