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About this quote

What does it mean?
Beauty is felt deeply but cannot be fully explained in words. Language fails to capture the essence of what we find beautiful.
In plain terms
Beauty is hard to describe with words.
What can you take from it?
Beauty is experienced rather than explained.

Where it applies

  • art criticism
  • nature appreciation
  • philosophy

Putting it to work

  • observe deeply
  • accept limits of language
  • express through art

Questions to consider

  • Can you explain why something is beautiful?
  • How does beauty change your mood?

Another view

Some aspects of beauty can be described through metaphor or analysis.

More from George Santayana

  1. The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic…

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  2. Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

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  3. I leave you but the sound of many a word In mocking echoes haply overheard, I sang to heaven. My exile made me free, from world to world, from all worlds carri…

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