“I think poetry can be a kind of secular way in which people can be led to approach the difficult parts of their life, where there's been loss, where there's sadness of a deep kind. If poetry can help people to be more at ease in expressing even to themselves a lot of the darkness and pain of ordinary human existence, then it's serving some kind of cultural role, perhaps more than a cultural role, perhaps it is serving something of a spiritual role.” PeopleIfsThinkingWayHumansKindHelpingPainSpiritualDifficultLossExistenceRolesDarknessSadnessApproachOrdinaryEaseServingSecularHuman Existence Author:Kevin Hart
“It's unsettling, to lose the safety of the familiar, even when what's disrupted is an ordinary routine. When I began this poem, I was grieving for the loss of my old barbershop in Manhattan, and wondering at the strangeness of my new one. I didn't have any idea the poem would break into the underworld, opening a deeper subject: the continuing force of the old griefs routine helps to mediate, and my strange, sheer wonder at my own survival. Where's home now? In the contingent present, in which anything can disappear, and where we're sometimes granted some form of grace.” IdeasSometimesHelpingHomeFormForceLosesMy OwnLossGriefWonderBreakGraceSubjectsStrangeSurvivalOrdinarySafetyDeeperDisappearFamiliarOpeningGrantedGrievingRoutineContinuingSheerManhattanStrangenessUnderworldBarbershop Author:Mark Doty
“What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and gestures.... ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for, what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for. Not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth--an ordinary life.” SelfPurposeCausesLossCommonGriefVisionStruggleEventsTheoryGoes OnOrdinaryJewNobleSelf WorthGrievingAbstractHolocaustGesturesGhettoSense Of SelfOrdinary LifePrecious ThingsOrdinarinessCommon ThingsNoble CausesWarsaw Author:Irena Klepfisz
“So, in the physical world mankind are prone to seek an explanation of uncommon phenomena only, while the ordinary changes of nature, which are in themselves equally wonderful, are disregarded.” WorldLossWonderfulMankindOrdinaryDisasterExplanationUncommonDisregarded Author:Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps
“And your brain doesn't naturally know how to think the way Zeckhauser knows how to play bridge. "for example," people do not react symmetrically to loss and gain. Well maybe a great bridge player like Zeckhauser does, but that's a trained response. Ordinary people, subconsciously affected by their inborn tendencies.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWayWellsDoePlayLossBrainKnow HowPlayerExampleOrdinaryGainsResponseTendenciesBridgesAffectedOrdinary People Author:Charlie Munger
“We're nothing if we're not loved. When you meet somebody who is more important to you than yourself, that has to be the most important thing in life, really. And I think we are all striving for it in different ways. I also believe very, very strongly that everybody is the hero/heroine of his/her own life. I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters” PeopleIfsThinkingWayTryingBelieveKindImportantDifferentCharacterLossHeroOrdinaryImportant ThingsStriveRelateDifferent WaysThings In LifeHeroinesLove And LossMost Important Things In LifePerhaps Love Author:Maeve Binchy