George Santayana Quotes

No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily.

There are wonderfully intrinsic moments when life makes sense, and doubts are banished as irrelevant in those moments. Of course, we can't stay in that state. We're not here to be blissed out all the time.

Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

A brahmin once asked The Blessed One: "Are you a God?" "No, brahmin" said The Blessed One. "Are you a saint?" "No, brahmin" said The Blessed One. "Are you a magician?" "No, brahmin" said The Blessed One. "What are you then?" "I am awake."

I’ve often said that I wish people could realize all their dreams and wealth and fame, so that they could see that it’s not where they’re gonna find their sense of completion. Like many of you, I was concerned about going out into the world and doing something bigger than myself, until someone smarter than myself made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself. My soul is not contained within the limits of my body, my body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul.

The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.

Enlightenment is the only real antidote to the world's despair.

Truly, he thought, the way of enlightenment is like unto half a mile of broken glass.

When you get to a higher level of consciousness, though, when you get into a spiritual approach to life, you are not trying to get someplace else...

The Sage has no thinking mind and therefore there are no ‘others’ for him.

Whatever the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the Being that it cannot feel.

Even great travelers of the inner world have got stuck in beautiful experiences, and have become identified with those experiences, thinking, "I have found myself." They have stopped before reaching the final stage where all experiences disappear. Enlightenment is not an experience.

When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It's a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It's a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification.

Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

One has to go beyond the mind to experience the spiritual bliss of desirelessness.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

The mind is the Buddha, and the Buddha is the mind.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

It is the prayer of my innermost being to realize my supreme identity in the liberated play of consciousness, the Vast Expanse. Now is the moment, Here is the place of Liberation.

Your nature is the Buddha.

One must realise his Self in order to open the store of unalloyed happiness.