Quotes from Jose Ortega y Gasset

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands upon himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

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

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.

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.

Para el hombre de la generación novísima, el arte es una cosa sin trascendencia.

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.

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

The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man

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.

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.

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.

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.

The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.

With morality we correct the mistakes of our instincts, and with love we correct the mistakes of our morals.

The individual point of view is the only point of view from which one is able to look at the world in its truth.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.

Let us tear down the romantic trappings that have adorned passion. Let us cease believing that the measure of a man's love lies in how stupid he has become or is willing to be.

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.

To live means to have ... a mission to fulfill-and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty.

Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.

…falling in love is a state of mental misery which has a restricting, impoverishing, and paralyzing effect upon the development of our consciousness.