Jose Ortega y Gasset

“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.”

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

“Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.”

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

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

“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.”

“To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.”

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

“Law is born from despair of human nature.”

“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.”

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

“An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.”

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

“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.”

“We cannot put off living until we are ready.”

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

“Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.”

“Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.”

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

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