Ortega Y Gasset Quotes

There is no doubt; even a rejection can be the shadow of a caress”.

The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a know how (mise au point) of the book as a vital function.

All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.

There is but one way left to save a classic; to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.

If the human intellect functions, it is actually in order to solve the problems which the man's inner destiny sets it.

Whoever has not felt the danger of our times palpitating under his hand, has not really penetrated to the vitals of destiny, he has merely pricked the surface.

Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.

It is not obligatory for a generation to have great men.

The hero's will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism.

One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.

Meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him, from that which can be called "public" or "popular" opinion.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Triumph cannot help being cruel.

Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.

The world is the sum-total of our vital possibilities.

Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.

The idea of beauty, like a slab of magnificent marble, has crushed all possible refinement and vitality from the psychology of love.

Since love is the most delicate and total act of a soul, it will reflect the state and nature of the soul. The characteristics of the person in love must be attributed to love itself.

Let others think what they like: for me, the culmination of life consists of a pure and subtly dramatic passion.

…falling in love is a state of mental misery which has a restricting, impoverishing, and paralyzing effect upon the development of our consciousness.

Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.

Why write, if this too easy activity of pushing a pen across paper is not given a certain bull-fighting risk and we do not approach dangerous, agile, and two-horned topics?

Let us tear down the romantic trappings that have adorned passion. Let us cease believing that the measure of a man’s love lies in how stupid he has become or is willing to be.

Marxian Socialism and Bolshevism are two historical phenomena which have hardly a single common denominator.

There might be a deceptive tendency to believe that a life born into a world of plenty should be better, more really a life than one which consists in a struggle against scarcity.

Man adapts himself to everything to the best and the worst.

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities my capacities.

Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.

To live means to have ... a mission to fulfill-and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something we make it empty.

Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.

What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.

All life is the struggle the effort to be itself.

Abasement degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.

All life is the struggle the effort to be itself. The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities my capacities.

The past will not tell us what we ought to do but... what we ought to avoid.

To excel the past we must not allow ourselves to lose contact with it on the contrary we must feel it under our feet because we raised ourselves upon it.

Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.