574 Quotes by George Santayana

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.

Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway.

The spirit’s foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.

Love is at once more animal than friendship and more divine...

In the concert of nature it is hard to keep in tune with oneself if one is out of tune with everything else.

Most men’s conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.

By nature’s kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man’s power to answer do not occur to him at all.

All the doctrines that have flourished in the world about immortality have hardly affected man’s natural sentiment in the face of death.

Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread.