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Life is fired at us point blank.

— José Ortega y Gasset

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Source, in full

More context: "To live or to be alive or, what is the same thing, to be a man, does not admit of any preparations or preliminary experiments. Life is fired at us point blank. ... Where and when we are born, or happen to find ourselves after we were born, there and then, like it or not, we must sink or swim."

Notes from Wikiquote

Man and People [El hombre y la gente] (1957), p. 42, translated by Willard R. Trask. ISBN 0-393-00123-7

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Life

More quotes by José Ortega y Gasset

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

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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.

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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)

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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.