Jose Ortega y Gasset Quotes & Sayings

“I am I plus my circumstances.”

“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.”

“An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.”

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

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

“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 essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.”

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

“Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.”

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