Love makes us poets and the approach of death makes us philosophers.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Love inspires creative expression while awareness of death inspires deep thinking.
- In plain terms
- Love makes us write poetry; thinking about death makes us think deeply.
- What can you take from it?
- Emotions drive creativity; mortality drives philosophy.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What drives you to create?
- Does death make us wiser?
Another view
Not everyone responds to love or death in these ways.
More from George Santayana
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
Permalink to quote #53 Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
Permalink to quote #55 Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.
Permalink to quote #52
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