To Mary Whitall Smith Berenson
Hotel Bristol
Rome. March 10, 1930
What! Do you propose that I should make a visit? It is a delusion of your excessive kindness to imagine that I might still be fit for such things. I am not; because although well enough in appearance, and still going strong in the solitude of my insides, I am deaf physically and intellectually, and incapable of society.
I have so long and so completely renounced all society that I don’t dare to go anywhere, and say nothing when I do.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Four, 1928–1932. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003. Location of manuscript: Villa I Tatti, Settignano, Italy.