To George Sturgis
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. August 31, 1924
The fine photograph of Rosamond and the boys arrived on the day after I had written to you, and I put off thanking you for it until the next occasion for a letter. I am very glad to see how Rosamond really looks in daily life: you are to be congratulated on having found a half—I won’t say so much better than the other—but so fit, to make good any deficiencies which your own half might have had, if it had had any. As to the boys, the phases of life pass by very rapidly at that age, but they both have an air of meaning to fight their way through the world, regardless of all obstacles, and of being able to do so. Health and energy! Yes, but people in the evening of life feel that there is a sort of danger in these privileges: so few people with strength know how to use it in securing something worth having, or in aiming at something attainable.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA