Quote

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

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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
Making
Inexorably
Lives
Operation
Individual
Consists
Live
Operations
Done
Direction
Life
Forward
Toward
Future

More quotes by Jose Ortega y Gasset

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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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Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.
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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.
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All we are given is possibilities — to make ourselves one thing or another.
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It would be a piece of ingenuousness to accuse the man of today of his lack of moral code. The accusation would leave him cold, or rather, would flatter him. Immoralism has become a commonplace, and anybody and everybody boasts of practising it.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
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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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Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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The trend towards pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence.
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tragedy in the theater opens our eyes so that we can discover and appreciate the heroic in reality.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Life is fired at us point blank.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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The hero's will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one
Jose Ortega y Gasset