George Santayana Quotes on Culture
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American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.
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All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg.
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Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
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England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies, and humors.
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A man's feet must be planted in his country but his eyes must survey the world.
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'In America literary reputations come and go so swiftly,' I complained, fatuously. [Santayana's] answer was swift. 'It would be insufferable if they did not.'