230 Quotes by Jose Ortega y Gasset

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

Man’s being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature, half transcending it.

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 most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: Those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, bu.

Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us – by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. ‘To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law.’

Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one.

The trend towards pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence...

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

The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history – its mass appeal.