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Home
Authors
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Spanish
Philosopher
About the author
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Magic
#Genius
#Inspiration
Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Life
#Biography
We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Time
#Man
#Creation
We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#History
We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#May
#Succeed
#Order
We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Saying
#Man
We cannot put off living until we are ready.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Living
Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Want
#Time
#Right
#Man
#First
#Europe
#Opinions
#Fascism
To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Question
To live is to feel oneself lost.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Wonder
Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Poetry
#Adolescence
There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#World
#Being
#May
#First
#Nobility
Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Youth
#Needs
#Living
There is but one way left to save a classic; to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Salvation
The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Life
#Man
The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#God
#Man
#Magic
#Creation
#Metaphor
The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Man
#Nature
#Exploration
The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Love
#Man
#Discontent
The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Order
#Existence
#Difficulties
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Will
#Mind
#Rights
Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Will
#Attention
Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Feeling
#Inferiority
Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Absence
Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Living
Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Life
#Future
#Direction
Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Life
#Future
Law is born from despair of human nature.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Law
#Nature
#Human nature
#Despair
In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Life
#Will
#Man
#Order
I am I plus my circumstances.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Circumstances
Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Feeling
#Values
#Hatred
For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Hurt
#Effort
Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Love
#Nature
#Vitality
Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Being
#Artist
Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Man
#Woman
#Excellence
An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Idea
#Truth
An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Life
#Death
#Existence
Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Life
#Man
#Duty
A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset,
Spanish
Philosopher
#Years
#Revolution