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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.

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
Line
Initials
Lines
Established
Courses
Limit
Course
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Given
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Nature
Fixed
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Past
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Chart
May
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Thinking is the desire to gain reality by means of ideas.
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Law is born from despair of human nature.
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If the human intellect functions, it is actually in order to solve the problems which the man's inner destiny sets it.
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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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Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
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All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.
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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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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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The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when the respect for what is has been exhausted.
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A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.
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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.
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The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café.
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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.
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Life is the external text, the burning bush by the edge of the path from which God speaks.
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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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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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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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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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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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Romantic poses aside, let us recognize that falling in love...is an inferior state of mind, a form of transitory imbecility.
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