To Otto Kyllmann
Hotel Bristol
Rome. March 14, 1939.
All my life I have read French books when I wished to be merely entertained or introduced to interesting objects or ideas, apart from their truth or value. In French, they do that sort of thing admirably, but in English—and much more in “American”—the medium is more refractory, and I seem to require genuine feeling and genuine thought.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA