The Sense of Beauty Quotes

“To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.”
― George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory

“A habitual indulgence in the inarticulate is a sure sign of the philosopher who has not learned to think, the poet who has not learned to write, the painter who has not learned to paint, and the impression that has not learned to express itself--all of which are compatible with an immensity of genius in the inexpressible soul.”
― George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory

“Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.”
― George Santanyana, George Santanyana: The Sense of Beauty or Aesthetics

“ولكن يندر أن يوجد الرجل أو العصر الذى ينتقى طريقه بمفرده ، بل يقتصر اختيارنا على العموم على واحد من اثنين : فإما أن نسبق غيرنا في الطريق الذي تم اختياره لنا فعلاً ، وإما أن نقف فى الطريق فنسده أمامهم . وما يمكننا أن نقوم به من إصلاح لا يتعدى عادة الإصلاح الداخلي الذي يتم في حدود معينة ، ويكون نتيجة دراسة الأشكال التقليدية دراسة أكثر عمقاً”
― George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory

“La belleza, según la sentimos, es algo indescriptible; jamás puede decirse lo que es ni lo que significa.”
― George Santayana, El sentido de la belleza

“Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention.”
― George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory (1955-06-16) [Paperback]

“The tendency of everything to maintain and propagate its nature is simply the inertia of a stable juxtaposition of elements, which are not enough disturbed by ordinary accidents to lose their equilibrium; while the incident of a too great disturbance causes that disruption we call death , or that variation of type , which , on account of it's incapacity to establish itself permanently, we call abnormal. Nature thus organizes herself into recognizable species ; and the aesthetic eye ,studying her forms ,tends ,as we have already shown , to bring the type within even narrower limits than do the external exigencies of life”
― George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty; Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory

“There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar, anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity”
― George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory