Ordinary Things Quotes - Page 3

• I've grown up in a generation that questions God for setting boundaries. Does He have the right to set boundaries? I've grown up in a generation that thinks where meeting with a God is an ordinary thing.

  Francis Chan

  Leadership, Christian, Thinking

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• Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the orther team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.

  Charles Duhigg

  Team, Thinking, Champion

  Charles Duhigg (2012). “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change”, p.61, Random House

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• I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way.

  Tracy Kidder

  Book, Writing, Sick World

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• My ideas often come from strong mental images. When I'm observing some relatively ordinary thing, I'll think, "What if...." and out of that brainstorming a story emerges.

  Cassandra Clare

  Strong, Thinking, Ifs And

  "The Last Book of The Mortal Instruments Series Has Arrived, and It's Full of Juicy Lust and Betrayal". Interview with Alexandra Schwartz, www.glamour.com. May 29, 2014.

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• At any rate, girls are differently situated. Having no need of deep scientific knowledge, their education is confined more to the ordinary things of the world, the study of the fine arts, and of the manners and dispositions of people.

  William John Wills

  Girl, Education, Art

  William John Wills (1863). “A Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia: From Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria”, p.71, London : R. Bentley

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• It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call 'The Ten Thousand Things' around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.

  Frederick Franck

  Drawing, Order, Discipline

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• When you are happy you are ordinary, because to be happy is just to be natural. To be miserable is to become extraordinary. Nothing is special in being happy - trees are happy, birds are happy, animals are happy, children are happy. What is special in that? It is just the usual thing in existence. Existence is made of the stuff called happiness. Just look! - can't you see these trees?...so happy. Can't you see the birds singing?...so happily. Happiness has nothing special in it. Happiness is a very ordinary thing.

  Rajneesh

  Happiness, Children, Animal

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• There is something about the Himalayas not possessed by the Alps, something unseen and unknown, a charm that pervades every hour spent among them, a mystery intriguing and disturbing. Confronted by them, a man loses his grasp of ordinary things, perceiving himself as immortal, an entity capable of outdistancing all changes, all decay, all life, all death.

  Frank Smythe

  Men, Unseen, Ordinary

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• The most ordinary things are to philosophy a source of insoluble puzzles. With infinite ingenuity it constructs a concept of space or time and then finds it absolutely impossible that there be objects in this space or that processes occur during this time . . . the source of this kind of logic lies in excessive confidence in the so-called laws of thought.

  Ludwig Boltzmann

  Time, Philosophy, Lying

  "Ludwig Edward Boltzmann" by S. Rajasekar, September 7, 2006.

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• Sometimes the most ordinary things are the ones we learn to miss the most.

  Jennifer Chiaverini

  Missing, Ordinary, Sometimes

  Jennifer Chiaverini (2012). “The Quilter's Apprentice: A Novel”, p.108, Simon and Schuster

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• It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes

  Oswald Chambers

  Mean, People, Ordinary

  Oswald Chambers (1994). “My Utmost for His Highest: The Golden Book of Oswald Chambers : Features the Author's Daily Prayers”, Discovery House Pub

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• There are no short cuts to Heaven, only the ordinary way of ordinary things.

  Vincent McNabb

  Patience, Cutting, Heaven

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• A letter makes ordinary things seem important.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Important, Ordinary, Letters

  Marilynne Robinson (2014). “Lila: A Novel”, p.73, Macmillan

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• End-of-the-world stories tend to ring true. I've always been drawn to them, but as I wrote my own, I found surprising pleasure in creating a world that is so radically changed, yet where there's so much meaning and value in every small and ordinary thing we have, and take for granted: hot showers, enough food, friends, routines.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Creating, Hot, Stories

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• I do love science fiction, but it's not really a genre unto itself; it always seems to merge with another genre. With the few movies I've done, I've ended up playing with genre in some way or another, so any genre that's made to mix with others is like candy to me. It allows you to use big, mythic situations to talk about ordinary things.

  Rian Johnson

  Ordinary, Fiction, Use

  "Why Looper is director Rian Johnson's best film yet". Interview with Peter Rubin, www.wired.com. September 27, 2012.

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• By the 6th grade I stopped doing ordinary things in front of people. It had been ordinary to sing, kids are singing all the time when they are little, but then something happens. It's not that we stop singing. I still sang. I just made sure I was alone when I did it. And I made sure I never did it accidentally. That thing we call 'bursting into song.' I believe this happens to most of us. We are still singing, but secretly and all alone.

  Lynda Barry

  Song, Believe, Kids

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• The young artist... will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. He will not try to make them extraordinary. Only their real meaning will be stated.

  Allan Kaprow

  Real, Artist, Trying

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• Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage.

  Joni Mitchell

  People, Upset, Ordinary

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• Champions do ordinary things better than everyone else.

  Chuck Noll

  Champion, Ordinary

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• I read a bit of the Icelandic sagas. They're fascinating in that they are completely ordinary. The farmer will go off into the hills and fight a troll, and then go back and do ordinary things. It's an odd mix of fantasy and reality.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Fighting, Reality, Ordinary

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• Do not try to do extraordinary things but do ordinary things with intensity.

  Emily Carr

  Practice, Trying, Ordinary

  Emily Carr (2009). “Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr”, p.58, D & M Publishers

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• I'm a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ordinary things.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Simple, Ordinary, My Family

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• Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it's something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words, but possible after all. If this were really true, then miracles would be the most ordinary things in the world, the most uninspiring things in the world, and what can one expect from people who have never been anything but ordinary and uninspired.

  Michael Cisco

  Mean, People, Miracle

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• What do we talk about? Just ordinary things. What happened today, or books we've read, or tomorrow's weather, you know. Don't tell me you're wondering if people jump to their feet and shout stuff like 'It'll rain tomorrow if a polar bear eats the stars tonight!

  Haruki Murakami

  Stars, Rain, Book

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Norwegian Wood”, p.140, Random House

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• Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe. Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance. They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.

  Terry Pratchett

  Confused, Ignorance, People

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