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.

Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.

Progress far from consisting in change depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are content to repeat it.

Prayer among sane people has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.

Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.

Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway.

It is wisdom to believe the heart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

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.