George Santayana (December 16, 1863-September 26, 1952) was an American philosopher, poet and essayist. He taught philosophy at Harvard University for 23 years. His works include: The Sense of Beauty, 1896; The Life of Reason, 1905-06; Character and Opinion in the United States, 1920; The Realm of Truth, 1920-40; The Last Puritan, 1935; Persons and Places, 1945; and The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, 1946. George Santayana wrote in Reason in Common Sense, volume I of The Life of Reason (1905):
<Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.> 1863GS001
In his Dialogues in Limbo, 1926, George Santayana wrote:
<Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.> 1863GS002
In The Genteel Tradition at Bay, 1931, George Santayana wrote:
<There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable.> 1863GS003
In Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 1900, George Santayana wrote:
<In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; as when we hear that to him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Such characterizations appeal to our sense of fact. They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour. For we naturally seek to express his awful actuality, his unchallengeable power, no less than his holiness and his beauty.> 1863GS004
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1863GS001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). George Santayana. Lewis C. Henry, Best Quotations For All Occasions (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1961), p. 171.
1863GS002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). George Santayana, 1926, in Dialogues in Limbo, 1926. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 704.
1863GS003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). George Santayana, 1931, The Genteel Tradition at Bay. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 704.
1863GS004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). George Santayana, 1900, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion.