George Santayana

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

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

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

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.

The tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and humane reflection: it is scholastic and proper to the Middle Ages and to Germany.

Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.

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

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

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

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

Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.

A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.

The Soul is the voice of the body's interests.

To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.