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.
It is impossible for a man to be freed from the habit of sin before he hates it, just as it is impossible to receive forgiveness before confessing his trespasses.
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.
... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.
We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams.
Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. "What inference," asked the latter, "might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works?" Haldane replied: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
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