"It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to"
About this Quote
Santayana is weaponizing the moralist's favorite prop: self-control. He sketches a little gothic mechanism of character, where the "virtuous" don't get punished for sin so much as for their smug confidence that they have transcended it. The devil here is less a horned villain than a psychological law: whatever you repress without understanding doesn't disappear, it waits. And when it returns, it returns with interest.
The line works because it flips virtue from strength into vulnerability. Suppression is not mastery; it's often just denial with better posture. Santayana's sting is aimed at the kind of person who treats desire as beneath them, who converts abstinence into status. "Think themselves superior to" is the tell: the real temptation isn't lust or anger, it's pride-the narcotic that lets someone mistake a clean record for a clean soul.
Context matters. Writing in the wake of Victorian moralism and alongside early modern psychology, Santayana is threading philosophy through the emerging insight that the mind has basements. You can't build a stable self on disavowal. What you refuse to integrate becomes fate, and fate loves dramatic entrances.
Subtext: the devil's "revenge" is irony. The righteous are not dragged down by the passions they indulge, but by the passions they refuse to admit. Santayana isn't pleading for hedonism; he's arguing for honesty. Virtue that doesn't look its own impulses in the eye is just a trap set by vanity, with a moral label slapped on the spring.
The line works because it flips virtue from strength into vulnerability. Suppression is not mastery; it's often just denial with better posture. Santayana's sting is aimed at the kind of person who treats desire as beneath them, who converts abstinence into status. "Think themselves superior to" is the tell: the real temptation isn't lust or anger, it's pride-the narcotic that lets someone mistake a clean record for a clean soul.
Context matters. Writing in the wake of Victorian moralism and alongside early modern psychology, Santayana is threading philosophy through the emerging insight that the mind has basements. You can't build a stable self on disavowal. What you refuse to integrate becomes fate, and fate loves dramatic entrances.
Subtext: the devil's "revenge" is irony. The righteous are not dragged down by the passions they indulge, but by the passions they refuse to admit. Santayana isn't pleading for hedonism; he's arguing for honesty. Virtue that doesn't look its own impulses in the eye is just a trap set by vanity, with a moral label slapped on the spring.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|
More Quotes by George
Add to List
