Normal Quotes - Page 17

• The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.

  Wallace Stevens

  Opposites, Imagination, Abnormal

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.153, Vintage

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• I am not metrosexual. I am not macho. I am normal. I don't even wear nail paint.

  Arjun Rampal

  Nails, Paint, Metrosexuals

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• The supreme empire is that of the Emperor who renounces all normal life, that of other men, and in who the care of supremacy doesn't weigh like a load of jewels.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Men, Jewels, Empires

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 121, 1982.

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• The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Optimistic, Differences, Intellectual

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.377, Courier Corporation

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• My mother made it seem perfectly normal for thousands of people to be cheering me, as if there was nothing special going on. I thought all children must live as I did.

  Shirley Temple

  Mother, Cheer, Children

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• Religion is as healthy and normal as life itself.

  Charles Fletcher Dole

  Healthy

  "The Coming Religion". Book by Charles Fletcher Dole, 1910.

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• Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.

  Stefan Zweig

  People, Lines, Firsts

  "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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• The world is rather shot to pieces [end of World War II - 1945], but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs.. .May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work - in spite of everything [a. o. using his bed sheets as canvas for the new paintings].

  Max Beckmann

  War, Blood, Boredom

  "Max Beckmann". Book by Stephan Lackner, 1983.

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• The time has come, I think, when we must recognize bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior... we shall not really succeed in discarding the straitjacket of our cultural beliefs about sexual choice if we fail to come to terms with the well-documented, normal human capacity to love members of both sexes.

  Margaret Mead

  Sex, Thinking, Capacity To Love

  Redbook Magazine, 1975.

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• As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result.

  Herbert Spencer

  Fall, Self, Long

  "The Principles of Ethics" by Herbert Spencer, (Ch. 10), 1897.

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• Lacan , Derrida and Foucault are the perfect prophets for the weak, anxious academic personality, trapped in verbal formulas and perennially defeated by circumstances. They offer a self-exculpating cosmic explanation for the normal professorial state of resentment, alienation, dithering passivity and inaction.

  Camille Paglia

  Self, Perfect, Personality

  "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf". Camille Paglia, "Arion", Third Series, Volume 1, No. 2, Spring 1991.

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• The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.

  Novalis

  Spiritual, Mean, Past

  "Blüthenstaub". Book by Novalis, 1798.

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• There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis , because it guarantees complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost a canonical status in Protestant theology. But now, we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical.

  Karl Barth

  Ideas, Prejudice, Guarantees

  Karl Barth (2004). “Church Dogmatics: The doctrine of the word of God (2 pts.)”, p.469, A&C Black

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• Any play that makes an audience think out of the box, that makes connections to life and names our pain and by doing so makes our pain subject to thinking and the process of understanding, is doing something inherently political. By promoting understanding, by putting experience in context, by making connections between the normal and the rational, theatre is an act of anti-terrorism. It stimulates courage and a survival spirit. In that sense of political, there are a lot of serious plays doing their work in the world.

  John Lahr

  Pain, Thinking, Play

  "Questions for John Lahr" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

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• Speeding is like drugs. It makes everything come at you fast, and when you go back to normal driving, safe driving, prudent driving, it seems boring. That's the danger of drugs. At first it's intoxicating, but then the rest of your life you're trying to find that very first time. It never is the same.

  Tim Allen

  Drug, Trying, Safe

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• I have always directed my attempts at the figurative representation of objects by way of summary and not very descriptive brushstrokes, diverging greatly from the real objective measurements of things, and this has led many people to talk about childish drawing.. ..this position of seeing them (the objects) without looking at them too much, without focussing more attention on them than any ordinary man would in normal everyday life..

  Jean Dubuffet

  Real, Men, Drawing

  "Prospectus et tous écrits suivants". Book by Jean Dubuffet, Vol. II, p. 105, 1967.

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• What seems interesting to me is to reproduce in the figurative representation of an object the whole complex system of impressions we receive in the normal course of everyday life, the way this affects our feelings and the shape it takes in our memory; and it is to this that I have always applied myself.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Memories, Interesting, Feelings

  "Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, Vol. II". Book by Jean Dubuffet, p. 103, 1967.

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• I would say natural is the best way to describe the real me. I'm not always going out or dressed up like I am on the red carpet. On a normal day, I wear normal clothes and wear little to no make-up. I'm always a bit girly, though.

  Paris Hilton

  Girly, Real, Clothes

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• I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

  Iain Banks

  Morality, Opinion, Guides

  "Excession (The Culture, Book 5)". Book by Iain Banks (Chapter 8 "Killing Time", Section VII, p. 269), 1996.

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• The Germans gathered together ethnic divisions from all over Europe in which men of the same linguistic and cultural background could serve together. The Georgian SS division conducted itself with distinction in normal military action, but a good many people seem to think that anybody who was ever a member of the SS was automatically a war criminal.

  Jeff Cooper

  Military, War, Men

  "Jeff Cooper's Commentaries", Vol. 1, No. 6, September 1993.

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• Nationalism is fraught with dangers, of course, but so is the blind refusal to recognize that attachment to one's own culture, traditions, and history is a creative, normal, and healthy part of human experience.

  Anthony Daniels

  Attachment, Creative, Healthy

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• "What is normal?" really becomes the question. What is normal, and how are we fooled into thinking it's something other than what we're doing at any given time. Every family has either a drug addict or an alcoholic or some sort of dysfunction that the family is dealing with. And I think the grace of this family is that they actually could be that far out there but also be forgiving, and be really human, and be human in front of each other without much shame.

  Mark Ruffalo

  Thinking, Dysfunction, Drug

  "Mark Ruffalo and Maya Forbes on How YouTube and Wes Anderson Helped Shape Infinitely Polar Bear". Interview with Richard Lawson, www.vanityfair.com. June 19, 2015.

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• You act like a normal human being and you treat them [actors around] like a buddy because you're all working together. It's no different than being Governor. You put a team together and say, "Guys, we all want to shine here. We all want to show that this administration is going to do things that other administrations have thought was impossible. Let's kick some ass together."

  Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Team, Shining, Guy

  Source: collider.com

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• What initially attracted me to The Seventh Seal was that it had values and characteristics which I was familiar with in other art forms, most notably, the European novel and certain forms on English drama, and indeed, in relation to my rather academic interest in history -- not "history" in the normal sense, but history as a form of entertainment . It might be a very unfashionable view but I believe that history is an amazing bank or reserve area of plots, characterisations, extraordinary events, etc.

  Peter Greenaway

  Art, Drama, Believe

  Interview in Art and Design, no. 49,

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• I think there's a side of me that's trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg - I don't usually admit this publicly - because I tend to think that they only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic. What I want to do is take whatever cinema is considered normal or successful at a particular time and play around with it - to use it as a way of luring audiences in.

  Terry Gilliam

  Successful, Thinking, Views

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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