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He once wrote of himself: "The only remarkable thing about my career is that I should have spent the better part of my life in the United States, and written my books in the English language, while retaining my Spanish nationality and sentiment, and figuring in the English-speaking world as a sort of permanent guest, familiar, appreciative, and I hope discreet, but still foreign. This is no less true of me intellectually than it is socially, and should not be ignored in considering my work."
Of Santayana's sprawling political work, Dominations and Powers, which he published in his old age, it can only be said that all readers seem to have been lost in its noble but confusing labyrinth. The old Spanish-Catholic belief in mystical authority came out in it; nothing could be less congenial to Western thought. Subjective philosophy, intuition, essence, had so thoroughly "gone out" that, while the sweep of Santayana's mind was admired, he seemed to be saying nothing seizable. His true role lay in being a civilized hermit on the adjacent hill, the sage apart, the skeptical psychologist. Loneliness and ecstasy were the distinctly nonmodern desires he recommended to Boston and the world.