Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
Jose Ortega Y GassetRead
There are, above all, times in which the human reality, always mobile, accelerates, and bursts into vertiginous speeds. Our time is such a one, for it is made of descent and fall.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the rapid changes and challenges of human existence in our current times.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset's quote highlights the dynamic nature of human reality, suggesting that we live in an era characterized by swift changes and a sense of decline. It speaks to the common experience of feeling overwhelmed by the pace of modern life and the existential reflections that arise from such conditions, urging individuals to recognize the transient and often tumultuous nature of existence.
In practice
During a lecture on modern life, you could use this quote to illustrate the rapid pace of societal change.
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.
I am myself and what is around me, and if I do not save it, it shall not save me.
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 might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.
He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?
It is labor that has made the world a fit habitation for the human race.
I have become convinced that the more wealth a country accumulates, the more isolated and lonely its people become. The loneliest are usually the children and the elderly. Children learn what they live, and isolation in the ‘village’ is one of the most destructive messages we daily write on the tablets of their hearts.
And I began to feel sorry for myself; for so many years, my drawer full of memories had held the same old stories.
Ugly deeds are taught by ugly deeds.
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