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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

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Jose Ortega y Gasset
Age: 72 †
Born: 1883
Born: May 9
Died: 1955
Died: October 18
Essayist
Literary Critic
Mathematician
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Poet
Politician
Sociologist
Translator
University Teacher
Madrid
Spain
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Mind
Commonplace
Assurance
Characteristics
Wherever
Hour
Proclaim
Knowing
Corny
Rights
Impose
Hours
Characteristic

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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.
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If the human intellect functions, it is actually in order to solve the problems which the man's inner destiny sets it.
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Man in a word has no nature what he has... is history.
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The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history - its mass appeal.
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The world is the sum-total of our vital possibilities.
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To learn English you must begin by thrusting the jaw forward, almost clenching the teeth, and practically immbilizing the lips. In this way the English produce the series of unpleasant little mews of which their language consists.
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To write well consists of continuously making small erosions, wearing away grammar in its established form, current norms of language. It is an act of permanent rebellion and subversion against social environs.
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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.
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Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.
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Commonplaces are the tramways of intellectual transportation.
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Liberalism is that principle of political rights, according to which the public authority, in spite of being all-powerful, limits itself and attempts, even at ist own expense, to leave room in the state over which it rules for those to live who neither think nor feel as it does, that is to say as do the stronger, the majority.
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The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but... what we ought to avoid.
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What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men, but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.
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To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man.
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Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.
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Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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The hunter is the alert man. But this itself-life as complete alertness-is the attitude in which the animal exists in the jungle.
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Life is fired at us point blank.
Jose Ortega y Gasset