To Henry Ward Abbot
7 Stoughton
Cambridge, Massachusetts. 15 February 1892 [postmark]
Sunday
I am very much pleased with what people have said of my verses lately, and I am making up my mind to try and publish more, finally following your advice of long ago. The reason is that having deteriorated and become worldly I want the world to think me a poet and philosopher; while I really had the temper of one I despised the world as it deserves. I also should like to have a reputation and a resource to back me in my academic life, which is resolutely unconventional, and which people may not always put up with. But I will never be a professor unless I can be one, as it were, per accidens. I would rather beg than be one essentially.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY