QuoteProject
In our rather stupid time, hunting is belittled and misunderstood, many refusing to see it for the vital vacation from the human condition that it is, or to acknowledge that the hunter does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, he kills in order to have hunted.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Hunting is often misunderstood, yet it serves as an essential escape from life's burdens.

In this quote, Jose Ortega Y Gasset emphasizes that hunting is not merely about the act of killing but rather the deeper experience it provides as a form of respite from the complexities of human life. He argues that many people fail to appreciate hunting's role as a vital means of reconnecting with nature and understanding one's existence, suggesting that the journey and experience of hunting hold more significance than the final outcome.

Themes

HuntingLifeExperienceVacationHuman Condition

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech on the importance of outdoor experiences, one can quote this to emphasize the value of connecting with nature.

More from Jose Ortega Y Gasset

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

Similar quotes

Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you've lived.
Elisabeth Kubler-RossRead
No. You can't work your way into heaven. Anytime you try and justify yourself with works, you disqualify yourself with works. What I do here, every day, for the rest of my life, is only my way of saying, 'Lord, regardless of what eternity holds for me, let me give something back to you. I know it doesn't even no scorecard. But let me make something of my life before I go.. and then, Lord, I'm at your mercy.
Mitch AlbomRead
We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.
Greg BoyleRead
The greatest good that can come to anyone is forming within them an absolute certainty of themselves, and of their relationship to the Universe, forever removing the sense of heaven as being outside of them.
Ernest HolmesRead
They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.
Emma GoldmanRead
Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.