QUOTE:If we remember another of Santayana's pronouncements, we may not be condemned to getting the liberal arts wrong.
Music, he once observed, is essentially useless. (He added that this is also true for life, but let's not go down that path.)
To say music and its kindred arts are useless is not the same as saying they are worthless.
What is worthless, of course, is a world without J.S. Bach or the Beach Boys.
What Santayana meant is that music has no end or goal outside itself. It is absolute and absolutely pointless
May 8, 2010 ROBERT ZARETSKY
chron.com+ More examples from wikipedia
Usually an aphorism is a concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation cleverly and pithily written. Aphorisms can be both prosaic or poetic, sometimes they have repeated words or phrases, and sometimes they have two parts that are of the same grammatical structure. Some examples include:
Good Art seems ancient to its contemporaries, and modern – to their descendants. — Plutarch
Lost time is never found again. — Benjamin Franklin
Mediocrity is forgiven more easily than talent. — Emil Krotky
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.— Benjamin Franklin
That which does not destroy us makes us stronger. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Wrong life cannot be lived rightly. — Theodor Adorno
If you see the teeth of the lion, do not think that the lion is smiling at you. — Al-Mutanabbi
The first ape who became a man thus committed treason against his own kind. — Mikhail Turovsky
Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
A mystic hangs a fig leaf on a eunuch. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
You can play a shoestring if you're sincere. — John Coltrane
When you are expected to exceed expectations, expect the unexpected. — Oleg Vishnepolsky
The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs. — Celia Green
It is not uncommon to commiserate with a stranger's misfortune, but it takes a really fine nature to appreciate a friend's success. — Oscar Wilde
Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. — Unknown, possibly French proverb, or authored by François de La Rochefoucauld
Only that which always existed can be eternal. — G. Antuan Suárez
Empathy is lost whenever it is most needed. — Arturo Mendívil
Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see. — Mark Twain
It is better to be hated for what one is, than loved for what one is not. — André Gide
Truths are not relative. What are relative are opinions about truth. — Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana, "The Life of Reason," Volume 1: "Reason in Common Sense," 1905.
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