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

Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
Jose Ortega y Gasset


For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

I am I plus my circumstances.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Law is born from despair of human nature.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

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.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset