Quotes from Jose Ortega y Gasset

A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.

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

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

The heart of man does not tolerate an absence of the excellent and supreme.

Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world

It is not obligatory for a generation to have great men.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

Man is a fugitive from nature.

Man in a word has no nature; what he has... is history.

Poetry has become the higher algebra of metaphors.

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.

What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men, but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.

We need to study the whole of history, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

There is but one way left to save a classic; to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.

The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man

Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be. He is causa sui to the second power.

There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when the respect for what is has been exhausted.

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

History is the science of people.