Thought is not a gift to man but a laborious, precarious and volatile acquisition. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
All we are given are possibilities to make ourselves one thing or another. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
With morality we correct the mistakes of our instincts, and with love we correct the mistakes of our morals. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but... what we ought to avoid. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
Since love is the most delicate and total act of a soul, it will reflect the state and nature of the soul. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
Romantic poses aside, let us recognize that "falling in love"...is an inferior state of mind, a form of transitory imbecility. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be.… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
“Let us tear down the romantic trappings that have adorned passion. Let us cease believing that the measure of a man’s love… — José Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said,… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
“Next time we will look at this from a much more basic point of view and one antedating all zoology, which, glimpsed… — José Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
“Recall what used to be the theme of poetry in the romantic era. In neat verses the poet lets us share his… — José Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
“…falling in love is a state of mental misery which has a restricting, impoverishing, and paralyzing effect upon the development of our… — José Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
It would be a piece of ingenuousness to accuse the man of today of his lack of moral code. The accusation would leave him… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-sat-isfied man. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
“For there is no doubt that the most radical division that is possible to make of humanity is that which splits into two classes… — José Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men, but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Romantic poses aside, let us recognize that "falling in love"...is an inferior state of mind, a form of transitory imbecility. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The masses think that is is easy to flee from reality, when it is the most difficult thing in the world. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
