Jose Ortega Y Gasset

One does not hunt in order to kill on the contrary one kills in order to have huntedIf one were to present the sportsman with the death of the animal as a gift he would refuse it. What he is after is having to win it to conquer the surly brute through

Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.

To wonder is to begin to understand.

The cynic a parasite of civilization lives by denying it for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.

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

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

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

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.

In order to be enchanted we must be above all capable of seeing another person simply opening ones eyes will not do.

The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man.

An obsession is intrusive because it does not require a permit to walk into the brain.

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

A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.

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

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.

When you are fed up with the troublesome present take your gun whistle for your dog and go out to the mountain.

Biography is a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.

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

We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its urgency, 'here and now' without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.

Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.

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.

All we are given are possibilities to make ourselves one thing or another.