"Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood."

George Santayana Literature See all quotes by George Santayana →

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“Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.”

“American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.”

“The soul, too, has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.”

“It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation.”

“Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.”

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

Resonant Thoughts

"How then does the Third Age acquire the kind of scoffing irony which serves it in place of Wit, and its measure of the Ridiculous! Thus:–it sets it down as indisputable that its Truth is the right Tru…"

— Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Philosophy1762–1814

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"There is nothing human in nature. The earth, though loved so dearly, would let me perish on the ground, and neither bring forth food nor water. Burning in the sky the great sun, of whose company I hav…"

— Richard Jefferies

Literature1848–1887

#nature

"Your gatherings are a living testimony of a determination to support these principles. It would be impossible to come into this presence, which is a symbol of more than 300 years of our advancing civi…"

— Calvin Coolidge

Politics1780–1853

#time

"You see the rivers running east. Then you see mountains rise. Rivers run off them to the west. Mountains come up like waves. They crest, break, and spread themselves westward. When they are spent, the…"

— John McPhee

Literature1931

#nature