It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Appreciating beauty and imagination surpasses mere scientific understanding.
This quote emphasizes the idea that feeling and experiencing beauty, as well as cultivating imagination and aesthetic taste, hold greater value than simply understanding the scientific or rational explanations behind those feelings. It suggests that the subjective experience of beauty can lead to a deeper, more profound connection to ideals and nature, which transcends the limitations of scientific analysis.
Themes
BeautyImaginationArtScienceNature
In practice
Example use cases
In an art class to inspire students about the importance of feeling art rather than just analyzing it.
More from George Santayana
All quotes →The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
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There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.
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Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.
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The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
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All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
George SantayanaRead
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