“But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy!”

— George Santayana

William James, of Santayana's The Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), in a letter to George H. Palmer (1900), as quoted in George Santayana : A Biography (2003) by John McCormick
Misattributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy!" by George Santayana?

George Santayana109

20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with P… 1863–1952

Related quotes

“Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Fichte Studies § 651

“Sometimes, a family is like an ear of summer corn: It might look perfect on the outside, but when you peel the husk away. every kernel is rotten.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Ali's Pretty Little Lies

“The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Section 4 : Sceptical Doubts Concerning The Operations of The Understanding
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

“Undoubtedly, philosophy caused the Revolution. But what caused philosophy? Theological arrogance.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“I have no perfect panacea for human ills. And even if I had I would not attempt to present a system of philosophy between the soup and fish”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 57.
Context: I have no perfect panacea for human ills. And even if I had I would not attempt to present a system of philosophy between the soup and fish, but this much I will say: The distinctively modern custom of marital bundling is the doom of chivalry and death of passion. It wears all tender sentiment to a napless warp, and no wonder is it that the novelist, without he has a seared and bitter heart, hesitates to follow the couple beyond the church door. There is no greater reproach to our civilization than the sight of men joking the boy whose heart is pierced by the first rays of a life-giving sun, or of our expecting a girl to blush because she is twice God's child today she was yesterday.

“Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Simply Perfect

“To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Works, VII, 17.
Context: The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of Reason (which is synonymous with the Idea) when considered in its own actuality, is to simultaneously enter external existence and emerge with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases — a multiplicity that envelops its essential rational kernel with a motley outer rind with which our ordinary consciousness is earliest at home. It is this rind that the Concept must penetrate before Reason can find its own inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But this infinite variety of circumstances which is formed in this element of externality by the light of the rational essence shining in it — all this infinite material, with its regulatory laws — is not the object of philosophy.... To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason.