Quotes by George Santayana

Ones friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

To cement a new friendship especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person and cut across the accidents of place and time.

It is characteristic of spontaneous friendship to take on without enquiry and almost at first sight the unseen doings and unspoken sentiments of our friends the part known gives us evidence enough that the unknown part cannot be much amiss.

Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium of custom of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.

There is nothing sacred about convention there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.

Habit is stronger than reason.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

I believe in the possibility of happiness if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions including optimism.

Happiness is the only sanction of life where happiness fails existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

Happiness is the only sanction in life where happiness fails existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

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

Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence.

For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.

Every real object must cease to be what it seemed and none could ever be what the whole soul desired.

Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway.

It is wisdom to believe the heart.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

By natures kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond mans power to answer do not occur to him at all.