Ordinary Quotes - Page 21

• A collection of plants is not a landscape, any more than a list of choice words is a poem. The merit is in the design, not the material it is expressed in, and the best designs, like the best poems, make ordinary material significant by its arrangement.

  Nan Fairbrother

  Choices, Design, Landscape

  Nan Fairbrother (1974). “The nature of landscape design: as an art form, a craft, a social necessity”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on television, but he had no way of connecting with those who shared his views. Nor was there a quick, readily available tool for an ordinary citizen to gather information on his own. In 1960, communication was a one-way street, and information was fundamentally inaccessible. The whole idea of summoning up data or reaching thousands of individuals with the touch of a finger was a science-fiction fantasy.

  Jeff Greenfield

  Communication, Home, Ideas

  Jeff Greenfield (2011). “Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reaga n”, p.36, Penguin

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• Sorcery: the systematic cultivation of enhanced consciousness or non-ordinary awareness & its deployment in the world of deeds & objects to bring about desired results.

  Hakim Bey

  Deployment, Sorcery, World

  Hakim Bey (2003). “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism”, p.22, Autonomedia

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• In ordinary life, the action of a third party does not free the contractor from an obligation; but the advantage of making a contract with heaven is that intentions are valid currency.

  Machado de Assis

  Party, Heaven, Doe

  Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Machado de Assis, John A. Gledson (1998). “Dom Casmurro”, p.146, Oxford University Press

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• I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.

  Ransom Riggs

  Would Be, Peculiar, Accepting

  Ransom Riggs (2011). “Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children”, p.9, Quirk Books

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• It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away

  Anne Tyler

  Mystery, Celebrate Life, Psychological

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• I leave these speculations to others. It’s quite possible that my work represents a search for beauty in the most prosaic and ordinary places. One doesn’t have to be in some faraway dreamland in order to find beauty.

  Saul Leiter

  Order, Dreamland, Speculation

  "Saul Leiter: The Quiet Iconoclast". Interview with Dean Brierly, photographyinterviews.blogspot.com. April 22, 2009.

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• Meanwhile the fact that the connection with the activity of memory in ordinary life is for the moment lost is of less importance than the reverse, namely, that this connection with the complications and fluctuations of life is necessarily still a too close one.

  Hermann Ebbinghaus

  Memories, Connections, Facts

  Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913). “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology”

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• Peace can be agreed around the conference table, but unless it grows in ordinary hearts and minds, it does not last. It may not even begin

  Jonathan Sacks

  Heart, Mind, Doe

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• When it's time to get dressed, put on your clothes. When you must walk, then walk. When you must sit, then sit. Just be your ordinary self in ordinary life, unconcerned in seeking for Buddhahood. When you're tired, lie down. The fool will laugh at you but the wise man will understand.

  Linji Yixuan

  Wise, Lying, Tired

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• History is no longer just a chronicle of kings and statesmen, of people who wielded power, but of ordinary women and men engaged in manifold tasks. Women's history is an assertion that women have a history.

  Toshiko Kishida

  Kings, Men, People

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• A great work of Art demands a great thought or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. - Neither in Art nor Literature more than in Life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well-dressed.

  Margaret Fuller

  Beauty, Art, Interesting

  Margaret Fuller (1860). “At Home and Abroad, Or, Things and Thoughts in America and Europe”, p.199

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• Now, occultism is not like mystic faculty, and it very seldom works in harmony either with business aptitude in the things of ordinary life or with a knowledge of the canons of evidence in its own sphere.

  A. E. Waite

  Business, Mind, Aptitude

  A. E. Waite (2012). “The Pictorial Key to the Tarot”, p.1, Courier Corporation

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• We ordinary people might lack your great speed or your X-Ray vision, Superman, but never underestimate the power of the human mind. We carry the most dangerous weapon on Earth inside these thick skulls of ours.

  Mark Millar

  Skulls, People, Mind

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• I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.

  William Hazlitt

  Lying, Hate, Eye

  William Hazlitt (1826). “The plain speaker: opinions on books, men, and things [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.364

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• Unfortunately, the world has taken some of the greatest minds God has given us and locked them up in cages. Most very brilliant or creative people seem strange to ordinary people. Geniuses are almost always outcasts. The intelligent are bullied on the playground. They see the world differently and are shunned for it. They nearly all turn out to be lonely at the least, locked up at the worst. It's human nature to encourage the status quo and shun those who see life differently.

  Ted Dekker

  Lonely, Taken, Intelligent

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• The crazy people of the world...shouldn't get to win. If God won't make it better after they do have their shitty little victories, then ordinary people have to. They have to try, at least.

  Stephen King

  Crazy, Winning, People

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• I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.

  Haruki Murakami

  Book, Reading, Humans

  "IQ84". Book by Haruki Murakami, 2010.

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• You've faced horrors in these past weeks... I don't know which is worse. The terror you feel the first time you witness such things, or the numbness that comes after it starts to become ordinary.

  Tasha Alexander

  Past, Numbness, Firsts

  Tasha Alexander (2013). “A Fatal Waltz”, p.163, Hachette UK

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• In my work, I really try to look at ordinary things quite closely to see if there isn't a little bit of something special about them. I'm trying to make something as nearly perfect as I can out of words.

  Ted Kooser

  Perfect, Special, Trying

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• His [Death] voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty.

  Martine Leavitt

  Song, Heart, Voice

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• Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.

  William Martin

  Inspirational, Life, Sympathy

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• I think all of us ordinary mortals tend to mythologize people as good-looking as you.

  Anne Rice

  Thinking, People, Looking Good

  Anne Rice (2013). “The Wolf Gift”, p.7, Random House

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• I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things—the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos—are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul.

  Caroline Myss

  Life, Fear, Real

  FaceBook post by Caroline Myss from Feb 04, 2014

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• You know what, the jacket’s like the car.” "“Is this a riddle?” " , "“No,” Peabody said as Eve swiped the master.","“It’s an", "ordinary thing—well, special, but a jacket, right? And the car, it’s ordinary, it even looks it. But both of them have the special inside. Cop special especially, you know? He so gets you. That’s even better than a just-because present.”", "“You’re right. He does. And it is.” Inside, Eve paused another moment. “He’s worried about me.”", [J.D. Robb, Celebrity In Death]

  Nora Roberts

  Car, Special, Doe

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