George Santayana

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

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

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

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

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.

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

The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.

The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.