"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself."
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Quote collection
George Santayana quotes (page 8 of 24)
471 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity."
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"The best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive"
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"It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness."
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"Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer; there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness."
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"The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations."
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"Each religion necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself. Religions, like languages, are necessary rivals. What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak."
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"Unmitigated seriousness is always out of place in human affairs."
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"Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy."
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"In this world we must either institute conventional forms of expression or else pretend that we have nothing to express; the choice lies between a mask and a figleaf."
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"Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one."
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"A conceived thing is doubly a product of mind, more a product of mind, if you will, than an idea, since ideas arise, so to speak,by the mind's inertia and conceptions of things by its activity. Ideas are mental sediment; conceived things are mental growths."
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"For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity."
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"Heaven is to be at peace with things."
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"Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily."
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"By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all."
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"Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace."
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"The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him."
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"Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them."
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"Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts."
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