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Ordinary Quotes

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Ordinary Quotes

“What the ordinary person means by a 'miracle' is some gross distortion or suspension of the laws of nature... but life itself strikes him as commonplace, when in truth a blade of grass or a neuron in the brain is a greater miracle.”

Mean Persons Law Brain Greater Ordinary Miracle Strikes Grass Gross Blades Laws Of Nature Commonplace Distortion Neurons Suspension Blades Of Grass Ordinary Person

Book:Best of Sydney J. Harris

Source: Best of Sydney J. Harris

“The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.”

Men Joy Grief Sorrow Ordinary Worn Toil Commonplace Ordinary Man

Book:The Quotable Osler

Source: The Quotable Osler

“Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

“Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace”

Ordinary Commonplace Disdain Esoteric

Book:Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist

Source: Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist

“No longer do we accept the 'sublimation model' according to which 'the function of art is to sublimate or transform experience, raising it from ordinary to extraordinary, from commonplace to unique, from low to high'.”

Art Poetry Accepting Unique Models Lows Ordinary Art Is Function Extraordinary Commonplace

Author:Rosalind E. Krauss

“The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangeous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain.”

Thinking Book Sometimes Would Be Reading Mistake Brain Sky Dangerous Reader Paper Ordinary Library Tricks Privacy Shelves Ink Printed Mundane Commonplace Fireworks Chained

Book:Soul Music: (Discworld Novel 16)

Source: Soul Music: (Discworld Novel 16)

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

“Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace”

Imagination Simple Ordinary Extraordinary Spheres Ugliness Commonplace Ardent

Book:The 120 days of Sodom and other writings

Source: The 120 days of Sodom and other writings

“The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal.”

Source: Dr. George Sheehan on getting fit & feeling great

“Deep within the individual is a vast reservoir of untapped power awaiting to be used. no person can have the use of all this potential until he learns to know his or her own self. the trouble with many people is that they got through life thinking and writing themselves off as ordinary commonplace persons. having no proper belief in themselves they live aimless and erratic lives largely because they never realize what their lives really can be or what they can become”

People Thinking Knows Writing Persons Self Use Used Individual Belief Realizing Trouble Ordinary Commonplace Deep Within Reservoirs Erratic

Author:Norman Vincent Peale

“I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.”

Writing Long Enough Seeing Ordinary Blame Extraordinary Marvelous Journal Scratches Remarks Commonplace

Book:Conversations with Saul Bellow

Source: Conversations with Saul Bellow