José Ortega y Gasset

“No viven juntás las gentes sin más ni más y porque sí; esa cohesion a priori sólo existe en la familia. Los grupos que integran un Estado viven juntos para algo: son una comunidad de propósitos, de anhelos, de grandes utilidades. No conviven por estar juntos, sino para hacer juntos algo.”

“The abstract is no more than an instrument, an organ, to see the concrete clearly.”

“Ser de la izquierda es, como ser de la derecha, una de las infinitas maneras que el hombre puede elegir para ser un imbécil.”

“To remain in the past means to be dead.”

“I am I and my circumstance; and, if I do not save it, I do not save myself.”

“We feel that we actual men have suddenly been left alone on the earth; that the dead did not die in appearance only but effectively; that they can no longer help us. Any remains of the traditional spirit have evaporated. Models, norms, standards are no use to us. We have to solve our problems without any active collaboration of the past, in full actuality, be they problems of art, science, or politics. (...) It is not easy to formulate the impression that our epoch has of itself; it believes itself more than all the rest, and at the same time feels that it is a beginning. What expression shall we find for it? Perhaps this one: superior to other times, inferior to itself. Strong, indeed, and at the same time uncertain of its destiny; proud of its strength and at the same time fearing it.”

“For there is no doubt that the most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves.”

“In the disturbances caused by scarcity of food, the mob goes in search of bread, and the means it employs is generally to wreck the bakeries. This may serve as a symbol of the attitude adopted, on a greater and more complicated scale, by the masses of today towards the civilization by which they are supported … Civilization is not "just here," it is not self-supporting.”

“Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.”

“Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.”

“The metaphor is perhaps the most fruitful power of man. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.”

“Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia.”

“The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man”

“There is no doubt; even a rejection can be the shadow of a caress”.”

“We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.”

“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. ”

“Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.”

“Persistent ill-humour is all too clear an indication that someone is living contrary to his[her] intended purpose.”

“On the Bigotry of Culture:: it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to put itself at the service of culture because only thus would it become charged with value. From which it would follow that human life, our pure existence was, in itself, a mean and worthless thing.”

“tragedy in the theater opens our eyes so that we can discover and appreciate the heroic in reality.”

“just because of its promise of unlimited possibilities technology is an empty form like the most formalistic logic and is unable to determine the content of life.that is why our time,being the most intensely technical,is also the emptiest in all human history.”

“In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.”

“Romantic poses aside, let us recognize that "falling in love"...is an inferior state of mind, a form of transitory imbecility.”

“Thinking is the desire to gain reality by means of ideas.”

“The poet begins where the man ends.The man's lot is to live his human life,the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.”

“Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do. ”

“The characteristic note of our time is the dire truth that, the mediocre soul, the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be mediocre, has the gall to assert its right to mediocrity, and goes on to impose itself where it can.”

“There are, above all, times in which the human reality, always mobile, accelerates, and bursts into vertiginous speeds. Our time is such a one, for it is made of descent and fall. ”

“The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart.”