It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
George Santayana

It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
George Santayana

It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.
George Santayana

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.
George Santayana

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
George Santayana

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.
George Santayana

Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
George Santayana

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.
George Santayana

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.
George Santayana

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
George Santayana

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.
George Santayana

Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world.
George Santayana

Music is essentially useless, as is life.
George Santayana

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.
George Santayana

Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.
George Santayana

Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.
George Santayana

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
George Santayana

Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.
George Santayana

Oaths are the fossils of piety.
George Santayana