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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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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
Take
Ceasing
Mean
Seriously
Serious
Means
Artist
Art
Persons
Person

More quotes by Jose Ortega y Gasset

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Whoever has not felt the danger of our times palpitating under his hand, has not really penetrated to the vitals of destiny, he has merely pricked the surface.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Poetry has become the higher algebra of metaphors.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Liberalism is that principle of political rights, according to which the public authority, in spite of being all-powerful, limits itself and attempts, even at ist own expense, to leave room in the state over which it rules for those to live who neither think nor feel as it does, that is to say as do the stronger, the majority.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Liberalism... is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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When you are fed up with the troublesome present, you take your gun, whistle for your dog, go out to the mountain, and, without further ado, give yourself the pleasure during a few hours or a few days of being Paleolithic.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Law is born from despair of human nature.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Hating someone is feeling irritation by their mere existence.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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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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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There is no doubt even a rejection can be the shadow of a caress”.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the self-satisfied man.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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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
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What, by a word lacking even in grammar, is called amorality, is a thing that does not exist. If you are unwilling to submit to any norm, you have, nolens volens , to submit to the norm of denying all morality, and this is not amoral, but immoral. It is a negative morality which preserves the empty form of the other.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
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Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
Jose Ortega y Gasset