Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but... what we ought to avoid.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Ought
Tell
Past
Avoid
Regret
More quotes by Jose Ortega y Gasset
To be free means to be lacking in constitutive identity...
Jose Ortega y Gasset
All we are given is possibilities — to make ourselves one thing or another.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
The people with the clear heads are the ones who look life in the face, realize that everything in it is problematic, and feel themselves lost. And this is the simple truth: that to live is to feel oneself lost. Those who accept it have already begun to find themselves, to be on firm ground.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
To wonder is to begin to understand.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Liberalism... is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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
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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
In this initial illimitableness of possibilities that characterizes one who has no nature there stands out only one fixed, pre-established, and given line by which he may chart his course, only one limit: the past.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
The hunter who accepts the sporting code of ethics keeps his commandments in the greatest solitude, with no witness or audience other than the sharp peaks of the mountain, the roaming cloud, the stern oak, the trembling juniper, and the passing animal.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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
Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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
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
I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
The choice of a point of view is the initial act of a culture.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
There are people who so arrange their lives that they feed themselves only on side dishes.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
