Scepticism 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 a long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness..

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Skepticism and Animal Faith, ch. 9 (1923).)

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Spinoza's Ethics, introduction (1910).)

The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Skepticism and the Animal Mind, p. 102.)

My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, essayist. Originally published 1923. Skepticism and Animal Faith, chapter 3, Dover Publications (1955).)

Logic, like language, is partly a free construction and partly a means of symbolizing and harnessing in expression the existing diversities of things; and whilst some languages, given a man's constitution and habits, may seem more beautiful and convenient to him than others, it is a foolish heat in a patriot to insist that only his native language is intelligible or right.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, essayist. Originally published 1923. Skepticism and Animal Faith, preface, Dover Publications (1955).)

Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly hangs about it, since it is the immovable standard and silent witness of all our memories and assertions; and the past and the future, which in our anxious life are so differently interesting and so differently dark, are one seamless garment for the truth, shining like the sun.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, essayist. Originally published 1923. Skepticism and Animal Faith, chapter 25, Dover Publications (1955).)

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. "Reason in Society," ch. 3, The Life of Reason (1905-1906).)

Oaths are the fossils of piety.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. "The Absence of Religion in Shakespeare," issue 5, New World Journal.)

Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. repr. In Little Essays, ed. Logan Pearsall Smith (1920). "The Elements of Poetry," Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900).)

The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.

(George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. The Genteel Tradition at Bay, ch. 1 (1931).)