“They [the wise spirits of antiquity in the first circle of Dante's Inferno] are condemned, Dante tells us, to no other penalty than to live in desire without hope, a fate appropriate to noble souls with a clear vision of life.”
Obiter Scripta (1936)
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George Santayana 109
20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with P… 1863–1952Related quotes

1930s, Speech to the Democratic National Convention (1936)

29
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)
Context: For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

The Universe - Sex in Space (2008)

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.361