"People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true."
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Quote collection
George Santayana quotes (page 10 of 24)
471 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean."
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"Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination."
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"I have no axe to grind; only my thoughts to burnish."
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"There is no dunce like a mature dunce."
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"Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over; but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light."
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"I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism."
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"Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure."
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"We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere."
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"Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained."
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"Nothing you can lose by dying is half as precious as the readiness to die, which is man's charter of nobility."
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"Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions."
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"Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel."
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"Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists."
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"It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to."
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"The Soul is the voice of the body's interests."
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"There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far."
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"Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are."
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"Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him."
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"Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves."
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