Ordinary Quotes - Page 3

• Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton.

  Annie Proulx

  Party, Games, Social

  Annie Proulx (1994). “The Shipping News”, p.254, Simon and Schuster

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• Ordinary people have extraordinary love.

  Clay Walker

  People, Adages, Ordinary People

  Song: Ordinary People

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• Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Men, Forgiving, Prejudice

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• For the rest, he was the same to all men, the fashionable world and the ordinary people. He judged nothing in haste, or without taking account of the cirumstances. He said, 'Let me see how the fault arose.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, People, Haste

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ verse latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Wisdom, Blessed

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• Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Literature, Missions, Certain

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• We judge matters so superficially that ordinary acts and words, done and spoken with some flair and some knowledge of worldly matters, often succeed better than the greatest cleverness.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Judging, Done, Matter

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• Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.

  Susan Cheever

  Death, Happens

  Susan Cheever (2015). “Home Before Dark”, p.233, Simon and Schuster

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• I thought the objects we value least because they were ubiquitous were actually the most extraordinary.

  Michael Craig-Martin

  Ubiquity, Perception, Usual

  "Michael Craig-Martin: Up close and impersonal". Interview With Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. May 4, 2011.

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• It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Race, Touching

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “Letters of Two Brides”, p.108, The Floating Press

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• He stepped into my room with one graceful move, as if entering through bedroom windows was nothing out of the ordinary.

  Amanda Hocking

  Moving, Entering, Rooms

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• The ordinary man is the curse of civilization.

  John Fowles

  Men, Civilization, Curse

  John Fowles (1963). “The collector”

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• Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

  Sigmund Freud

  Knowledge, Men, Poetry

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• For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

  Haruki Murakami

  Running, Distance, Mean

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 03, 2015

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• [Jesus] matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weaknesses he gives us strength and and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity." (Dallas Willard in Ruthless Trust - Brennan Manning)

  Brennan Manning

  Jesus, Giving, Promise

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• Ishabal: "If you may correct your vision as you like, why do you wear spectacles?" Tris: "Because I like them. Because I have better things to do with my magic than fixing my vision when ordinary glass will do.

  Tamora Pierce

  Glasses, Magic, Vision

  Tamora Pierce (2010). “The Will of the Empress”, p.105, Scholastic Inc.

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• There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  People, Foam, Mouths

  DOROTHY L. SAYERS (1963). “STRONG POISON”

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• The world is a place where the extraordinary can sit just beside the ordinary with the thinnest of boundaries; that even in environments inhospitable to man, all sort of entities might thrive.

  Jodi Picoult

  Men, World, Might

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #2: Perfect Match, Second Glance, and My Sister's Keeper”, p.422, Simon and Schuster

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• Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.

  William Shakespeare

  Dark, Love Is, House

  William Shakespeare (1810). “As You Like it: A Comedy”, p.45

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• When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Children, Believe, Mean

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.102, Macmillan

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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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• There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.

  Mother Teresa

  Pain, Powerful, Healing

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• Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.

  George Orwell

  People, Behaviour, Poverty

  George Orwell (2012). “Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.4, Lulu.com

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• You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.

  Deb Caletti

  Past, Bangs, Moments

  Deb Caletti (2012). “Stay”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.

  Anne Lamott

  Ocean, Heart, Artist

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