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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.

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
Human
Settings
Humans
Missions
Mean
Measure
Something
Setting
Fulfill
Make
Avoid
Definite
Life
Empty
Emptiness
Means
Dedicated
Nature
Mission

More quotes by 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.
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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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There are people who so arrange their lives that they feed themselves only on side dishes.
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Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.
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That Marxism should triumph in Russia, where there is no industry, would be the greatest contradiction that Marxism could undergo. But there is no such contradiction, for there is no such triumph. Russia is Marxist more or less as the Germans of the Holy Roman Empire were Romans.
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We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its urgency, 'here and now' without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.
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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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Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort.
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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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An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
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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
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The heart of man does not tolerate an absence of the excellent and supreme.
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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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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Man in a word has no nature what he has... is history.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when the respect for what is has been exhausted.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.
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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
Jose Ortega y Gasset