Jose Ortega Quotes

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

If the human intellect functions, it is actually in order to solve the problems which the man's inner destiny sets it.

Whoever has not felt the danger of our times palpitating under his hand, has not really penetrated to the vitals of destiny, he has merely pricked the surface.

Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.

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

The hero's will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism.

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

Meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him, from that which can be called "public" or "popular" opinion.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Triumph cannot help being cruel.

Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.

The world is the sum-total of our vital possibilities.

Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.

Man adapts himself to everything to the best and the worst.

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

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.

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.

All life is the struggle the effort to be itself.

Abasement degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.

The past will not tell us what we ought to do but... what we ought to avoid.

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

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.