Category: LETTERS Page 51 of 274

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hôtel des Réservoirs
Versailles, France. August 18, 1932

Dear Cory,

Love is expensive in all its forms. I don’t expect you to get on—yet—entirely without it, and don’t mind an occasional appeal for a little extra cash, especially as it has always been, so far, a mere trifle. But I think you oughtn’t to overdo the part of the spoilt grandson: not that it matters as far as I or Strong are concerned, but that it encourages a sort of weakness in yourself. I told you in a previous sermon that you ought, at your age and with your experience, to consider love a weakness, and not to be proud of it.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York

To George Sturgis
Hotel Victoria
Montreux, Switzerland. August 17, 1936

I write again to say I have received your letter enclosing one from Rita Ingersoll. She is right in thinking that my Christian name was given me in memory of your grandfather. It was (at least nominally) your Aunt Susie’s doing. You know she was my godmother, and always took that office quite seriously. And she had a great way of encouraging herself in sentiment about old things, working herself up, against the feeling prevalent round her, to enthusiasm for her old impressions. In this way she became intensely Catholic in Puritan Unitarian Boston, and finally married Celedonio, because he had been one of her early beaux. So, remembering her father a little (she must have been hardly seven when he died) she wanted to give me his name. George is not a name familiar in Spain. The national military saint is Santiago (supposed to be St. James, the Apostle) not St. George. But nobody objected, or thought it decent to object, and so George I became, for better or for worse; although they did add Agustín for my father and Nicolás for his brother the Major, who was my godfather.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Richard Colton Lyon
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. August 16, 1948

Don’t worry about ignorance of philosophy or anything else. The only thing that is annoying is set opinions when they are not one’s own and are asserted without good arguments.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Porter Garnett
UNIVERSITY CLUB
San Francisco. August 15, 1911

I am struck in California by the deep and almost religious affection which people have for nature, and by the sensitiveness they show to its influences; not merely poetically, but also athletically, because they like to live as nature lives. It is a relief from business and the genteel tradition. It is their spontaneous substitute for articulate art and articulate religion, and is perhaps the substance out of which these may some day be formed afresh.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.