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I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.

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
Stewardship
Surroundings
Preserve
Preserves
Plus
Latter
Environment
Land

More quotes by Jose Ortega y Gasset

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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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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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Today violence is the rhetoric of the period.
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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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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.
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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.
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The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
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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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Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one
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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.
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To be free means to be lacking in constitutive identity...
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All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.
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Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.
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A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.
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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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We need to study the whole of history, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.
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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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Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
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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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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.
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