It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
Is it indeed from the experience of beauty and happiness, from the occasional harmony between our nature and our environment, that we draw our conception of the divine life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our understanding of the divine is shaped by our experiences of beauty and happiness in harmony with our surroundings.
George Santayana suggests that our conception of the divine life is rooted in our personal experiences of beauty and happiness. These moments of harmony between our inner nature and the external world help form our understanding of what is sacred or divine. Essentially, the divine is not an abstract concept, but something that is felt through our lived experience in a harmonious environment.
Themes
BeautyHappinessDivineHarmonyNatureExperience
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote in a discussion about how art and nature influence spirituality.
More from George Santayana
All quotes βThe 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.
George SantayanaRead
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.
George SantayanaRead
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.
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.
George SantayanaRead
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.
George SantayanaRead
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