Ordinary Quotes - Page 13

• With the death of my father, it wasn't just the objects of everyday life that had changed; even the most ordinary street scenes had become irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Father, Everyday, Details

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “The Museum of Innocence”, p.312, Faber & Faber

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• Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.

  Haruki Murakami

  People, Imperfect

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• Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.

  Haruki Murakami

  War, Thinking, Japan

  "Kafka On The Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami, www.newyorker.com. 2002.

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• I've never been in love, but I've always imagined it--weirdly--like some sort of OxiClean commercial. The TV host shows a scene from an ordinary day, and then takes a big old sponge soaked in love and swipes away the stains. Suddenly that same scene is missing all the mistakes, all the loneliness. The colors are like jewels, ten times richer than they were before. The music is louder and clearer. "Love," the host will say, "makes life a little brighter.

  Jodi Picoult

  Mistake, Loneliness, Ordinary Days

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• One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.

  C. S. Lewis

  Eye, People, Facts

  C. S. Lewis (2010). “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, p.21, HarperCollins UK

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• By choosing to live above the ordinary level we create extraordinary problems for ourselves.

  Henry Miller

  Levels, Problem, Choosing To Live

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• The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Night, Ideas

  "Cosmos". Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

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• Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.

  Anne Frank

  Book, Reading, Mean

  Anne Frank, General Press (2016). “The Diary of a Young Girl”, p.63, GENERAL PRESS

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• For me, Savannah's resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.

  John Berendt

  Cities, People, Personality

  John Berendt (2010). “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, p.454, Vintage

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• If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!

  Idries Shah

  Wise, Men, Thinking

  Idries Shah (1983). “Reflections”, p.28, Octagon Press Ltd

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• Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Time, Men, Thinking

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.88, Publishdrive

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• That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.

  Ted Hughes

  Children, People, Walking Dead

  Ted Hughes, Christopher Reid (2008). “Letters of Ted Hughes”, Farrar Straus & Giroux

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• There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie’s opinion. Ordinary was for suckers.

  Libba Bray

  Opinion, Sucker

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• Mothers were much too sharp. They were like dogs. Buster always sensed when anything was out of the ordinary, and so did mothers. Mothers and dogs both had a kind of second sight that made them see into people's minds and know when anything unusual was going on.

  Enid Blyton

  Mother, Dog, Sight

  Enid Blyton (2013). “The Mystery of the Hidden House”, p.68, Egmont UK

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• Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet.... If you really have to quote someone, quote a geographer; that way you won't give yourself away. (p 44)

  Knut Hamsun

  Giving, Way, Fool

  Knut Hamsun (2011). “Mysteries”, p.33, Souvenir Press

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• When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.

  Brené Brown

  Fear, Feelings, Lenses

  Brené Brown (2013). “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead”, p.18, Penguin UK

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• Eating, drinking, dying - three primary manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and, if they think seriously about it, refuse to accept it. An enlightened person knows it, lives it, and accepts it completely. He eats, he drinks, and in due course he dies - but he eats with a difference, drinks with a difference, dies with a difference.

  Aldous Huxley

  Drinking, Animal, Thinking

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• He strode over to the ruined church. This, Blue had discovered, was how Gansey got places - striding. Walking was for ordinary people.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Blue, People, Church

  Maggie Stiefvater (2012). “The Raven Boys”, p.210, Scholastic Inc.

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• Please. She sighed. 'Can't a girl have high standards? I don't want an ordinary boy.

  Sarah Dessen

  Girl, Boys, High Standards

  Sarah Dessen (2006). “The Truth About Forever”, p.90, Penguin

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• ...the great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.

  Abraham Maslow

  Inspirational, Faith, Family And Friends

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• We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.

  Carol S. Dweck

  Thinking, Idols, People

  Carol S. Dweck (2006). “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”, p.90, Random House

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• Body tension will always be present if our good feeing is just ordinary, self-centered happiness. Joy has no tension in it, because joy accepts whatever is as it is.

  Joko Beck

  Self, Joy, Body

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• Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember - no matter how ordinary things seem between us - I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will.

  Richelle Mead

  Love You, Thinking, Long

  Richelle Mead (2013). “The Indigo Spell: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.20, Penguin

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• For anyone to understand a regime like the GDR, the stories of ordinary people must be told. Not just the activists or the famous writers. You have to look at how normal people manage with such things in their pasts.

  Anna Funder

  Past, People, Looks

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• The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.

  Mark Nepo

  Light, Broken, Water

  Mark Nepo (2011). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)”, p.24, Conari Press

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