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

What this quote means

True effort is measured by the discomfort it causes during the process of striving for a goal.

This quote by Jose Ortega Y Gasset emphasizes that genuine effort often comes with challenges and discomfort. It suggests that one must push through pain and difficulty to truly engage in meaningful work or pursuit, implying that only when we are tested do we realize the depth of our commitment and effort towards our goals.

Themes

EffortPainCommitmentGrowthMotivation

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech to encourage students preparing for exams.

More from Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
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"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.
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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.
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I am myself and what is around me, and if I do not save it, it shall not save me.
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We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love dies.
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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.
Jose Ortega Y GassetRead

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