574 Quotes by George Santayana

The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.

An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.

The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.

The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey.

Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.

The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art.

...science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common-sense rounded out and minutely articulated. It is therefore as much an instinctive product, as much a stepping forth of human courage in the dark, as is any inevitable dream or impulsive action.

There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.