Skip to content

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

— José Ortega y Gasset The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

Another quote →

Topics

Art

More quotes by José Ortega y Gasset

Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us — by obligations, not by rights.

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being.

History as a System (1962)

Nationalism is always an effort in a direction opposite to that of the principle which creates nations. The former is exclusive in tendency, the latter inclusive.

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities.

The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

All José Ortega y Gasset quotes →

You may also like

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.

George MacDonald The Fantastic Imagination (1893)

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Simone Weil

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: José Ortega y Gasset (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.