George Santayana

There is nothing sacred about convention there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.

Habit is stronger than reason.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium of custom of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.

Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.

It is characteristic of spontaneous friendship to take on without enquiry and almost at first sight the unseen doings and unspoken sentiments of our friends the part known gives us evidence enough that the unknown part cannot be much amiss.

To cement a new friendship especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person and cut across the accidents of place and time.

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another people are friends in spots.

The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.

England is the paradise of individuality eccentricity heresy anomalies hobbies and humours.

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.

Nothing you can lose by dying is half so precious as the readiness to die which is man's charter of nobility.

There is nothing to which men while they have food and drink cannot reconcile themselves.

Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable what it is or what it means can never be said.

Art is a delayed echo.