"Even the most inspired verse, which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal, becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic; the language it was written in dies, a learned education and an imaginative effort are requisite to catch even a vestige of its original force. Nothing is so irrevocable as mind."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
AphoristsNovelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesPoets from the United States19th-century poets from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"Proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposit…"
"In Aristotle the conception of human nature is perfectly sound; everything ideal has a natural basis and everything n…"
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."
"Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble, it must remain rare, if common, it must become mean."
"On fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles,…"
"Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said."
"[Everything] ideal has a natural basis and everything natural an ideal development."
"Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the …"
"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment."
"But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy!"