Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
Jose Ortega Y GassetRead
I am myself and what is around me, and if I do not save it, it shall not save me.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the interconnectedness between the self and the environment, suggesting that neglecting one can lead to the downfall of the other.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset's quote highlights the idea that our identity and well-being are deeply rooted in our surroundings. It suggests that taking responsibility for our environment is crucial, as neglecting it can lead to a deterioration of both the individual and the collective. The quote serves as a reminder of the reciprocal relationship between self and society, urging individuals to engage with and preserve their surroundings.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about environmental conservation.
Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
"Natural" man is always there, under the changeable historical man. We call him and he comes-a little sleepy, benumbed, without his lost form of instinctive hunter, but, after all, still alive. Natural man is first prehistoric man-the hunter.
We have not reached ethical perfection in hunting. One never achieves perfection in anything, and perhaps it exists precisely so that one can never achieve it. Its purpose is to orient our conduct and to allow us to measure the progress accomplished. In this sense, the advancement achieved in the ethics of hunting is undeniable.
We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love dies.
Life is a terrible conflict, a grandiose and atrocious confluence. Hunting submerges man deliberately in that formidable mystery and therefore contains something of religious rite and emotion in which homage is paid to what is divine, transcendent, and in the laws of Nature.
We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.
The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.
There's no such thing as an anti-war film.
What looked safe was not safe. What looked hard and unsafe was probably safer. Anyway, safe was somewhere else in the world.
If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
The practice is to make the non-arising of grasping and clinging absolute, final, and eternally void, so that no grasping and clinging can ever return. Just that is enough. There is nothing else to do.
Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.
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