Quotes by George Santayana

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

the world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms...

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.

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