It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People accept what they can handle and dismiss what they cannot.
This quote by George Santayana suggests that individuals are willing to embrace experiences and realities that they feel equipped to deal with, while they tend to overlook or reject those that seem beyond their capacity to understand or manage. It highlights the limitation of human perception and the various ways we confront or evade challenging truths in life.
Themes
AcceptancePerceptionRealityExperienceHuman Nature
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal growth, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of facing challenges.
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
Similar quotes
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
Charles DickensRead
The villains are all parts of me. For years I've been wondering what it would be like if all those negative elements were forced onto the main character's side. I can understand a character with that kind of anger.
Hayao MiyazakiRead
A man with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the universe, or even with the ways of society. Let the unfortunates rail; the others may play marbles.
Stephen CraneRead
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.
Abraham LincolnRead
God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure!
Robert M. La Follette, Sr.Read
Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves.
Erwin SchrodingerRead