George Santayana vs. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
George Santayana
1863 – 1952
George Santayana was a Spanish and U.S. philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, he moved to the United States at the age of eight.
"The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 – 1882
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master".
"He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues …"
Connections
Both wrote about: