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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
Land
Stewardship
Surroundings
Preserve
Preserves
Plus
Latter
Environment

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Liberalism... is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet.
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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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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.
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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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One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.
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Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
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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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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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Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.
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Life means to have something definite to do-a mission to fulfill-and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty. Human life, by its very nature, has to be dedicated to something.
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The heart of man does not tolerate an absence of the excellent and supreme.
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The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the self-satisfied man.
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To wonder is to begin to understand.
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tragedy in the theater opens our eyes so that we can discover and appreciate the heroic in reality.
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