Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
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
Means
Dedicated
Nature
Mission
Human
Settings
Humans
Missions
Mean
Measure
Something
Setting
Fulfill
Make
Avoid
Definite
Life
Empty
Emptiness
More quotes by Jose Ortega y Gasset
In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything to which to give themselves.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Natural man is always there, under the changeable historical man. We call him and he comes-a little sleepy, benumbed, without his lost form of instinctive hunter, but, after all, still alive. Natural man is first prehistoric man-the hunter.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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
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
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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him, from that which can be called public or popular opinion.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Liberalism... is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Love is exclusivity, selection.
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
The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
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
For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.
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
The cynic, a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
I am free by compulsion, whether I wish to be or not.
Jose Ortega y Gasset