Quotessence
Home / Topics / Ordinary Quotes

Ordinary Quotes

Browse 3099 quotes about Ordinary.

Related topics

PeopleOrdinary PeopleExtraordinaryMenIfsWorldThinkingWayOrdinary LifeKnowsOrdinary ManPersonsHumansWantOrdinary ThingsArtMindLittlesWellsLooksMeanTryingKindFeelsMomentsShouldMaySeemsGivingNeedsOrdinary PersonDoeMadeCommonDifferentIdeasWritingEverydayFirstsLanguageChildrenUseCitizensExtraordinary ThingsHas BeensSelfSimpleBelieveSometimesFactsLifeMightRealSaidStoriesTurnsHappensLife IsCharacterEnoughOrdinary CitizensTwoBookLightMatterHeartRealityBigsCoursesGovernmentHuman BeingsLawSpecialWholeWould BeFeelingsHelpingShowsStatesYearsDoneGivenMiracleObjectsFoundHomeArtistSoulFormLongReasonValuesCountryDifferencesEventsHandsImportantNaturalProblemSituationmore

Ordinary Quotes

“The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle.”

MenWritingHumansEndsMightArtistHumanityForceCreativeClearFateAchieveHe ManCostOrdinarySubtleUrgesVehicleBiographiesGreat ArtCunningUnbornGreat ArtistYokeForces Of NatureHuman Happiness
Author:Carl Jung
Create image

“I should love to do a novel, about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself.”

ShouldWellsLittlesEndsCharacterMightNovelSeeingReaderOrdinaryAbnormalPresent DayOrdinary LifeDay LifeReluctanceMain CharactersAbnormalityArresting
Author:Patricia Highsmith
Create image

“End-of-the-world stories tend to ring true. I've always been drawn to them, but as I wrote my own, I found surprising pleasure in creating a world that is so radically changed, yet where there's so much meaning and value in every small and ordinary thing we have, and take for granted: hot showers, enough food, friends, routines.”

WorldEndsEnoughStoriesValuesFoundMy OwnPleasureChangedCreatingOrdinaryHotRingsGrantedSurprisingShowersEnd Of The WorldOrdinary Things
Author:Karen Thompson Walker
Create image

“We must now turn from considering the necessary struggle with language arising, as it were, from its very nature and the nature of the society it serves to the more ominous threat to its integrity brought about neither by its innate inadequacy nor yet by the incompetence and carelessness of its ordinary users, but rather engineered deliberately by those who will manipulate words for their own ends.”

EndsTurnsLanguageStruggleIntegrityOrdinaryThreatUsersConsideringManipulateInnateIncompetenceInadequacyCarelessnessOminous
Book:Hopes and impediments: selected essays
Create image

“There are some people who don't conform to the signals. An ordinary well-regulated locomotive slows down or pulls up when it sees the red light hoisted against it. Perhaps I was born color blind. When I see the red signal -- I can't help forging ahead. And in the end, you know, that spells disaster.”

PeopleKnowsWellsI CanEndsHelpingLightBornColorOrdinaryRedBlindDisasterSpellsConformSignalsSlow DownPull UpsForgingRed LightsLocomotivesForging Ahead
Author:Agatha Christie
Create image

“Dachau has been my own lifelong point of no return. Between the moment when I walked through the gate of that prison, with its infamous motto, 'Arbeit Macht Frei,' and when I walked out at the end of a day that had no ordinary scale of hours, I was changed, and how I looked at the human condition, the world we live in, changed ... Years of war had taught me a great deal, but war was nothing like Dachau. Compared to Dachau, war was clean.”

WorldYearsHumansHas BeensWarEndsMomentsHoursMy OwnDealsConditionsChangedTaughtReturnOrdinaryPrisonCleanScalesWar Of The WorldsGatesWorld War IiHolocaustHuman ConditionWorld War IMottoLifelongInfamousDachau
Author:Martha Gellhorn
Create image

“[Ritual] dwells in an invisible reality and gives this reality a vocabulary, props, costume, gesture, scenery. Ritual makes things separate, sets them apart from ordinary affairs and thoughts. Rituals need not be solemn, but they are formalized, stylized, extraordinary, and artificial. In the name of ritual, we can do anything. We can do astonishing acts. In the end, ritual gives us assurance about the unification of things.”

NeedsGivingEndsRealityNamesCan DoOrdinaryExtraordinaryAffairInvisibleRitualArtificialGesturesCostumesVocabularyAssuranceAstonishingSolemnPropsSceneryUnification
Author:Barbara Myerhoff
Create image

“The fact that the patients were complex human beings with a rich life beyond the hospital never really sank into the consciousness of the residents. Because they had no rich lives beyond the hospital, they assumed no one else did, either. In the end, what they lacked was not medical knowledge but ordinary life experience.”

HumansEndsFactsHuman BeingsConsciousnessRichOrdinaryComplexesPatientMedicalHospitalsLife ExperienceOrdinary LifeResidentsRich LifeMedical Knowledge
Book:Travels
Create image

“It is right here, all of it, here for the taking, right before our eyes - happiness, fulfillment, hope, peace, justice. And most of all, there is truth, ordinary and simple, just sitting there to be plucked, if only we get our lazy rear ends off the pillow of complacency. But first, we need to open our eyes to this banal fact. And for that we need a periodic bit of shakeup in the form of an infusion of wonder - fantastic literature.”

IfsNeedsFirstsEndsFactsEyeFormLiteratureBitsJusticeSimpleWonderOrdinarySittingFantasticFulfillmentLazyComplacencyPillowPeace JusticeInfusion
Author:Vera Nazarian
Create image

“Even though the play [ The Best Man] was written a long time ago, the characters seem modern and their struggles to make ends meet and to "have a little fun along the way" have a very contemporary feel. The similarity between the The Great Depression and The Great Recession - as well as the gulf between the super-rich and the ordinary Joe - still rings a bell. One of the things this production accentuates is how beautifully Grandpa and his family accept all kinds of people - rich or poor, black or white - and the best thing that can happen to you is to be part of a loving family.”

PeopleMenWayFeelsWellsKindLittlesLongStillsEndsPlayCharacterSeemsHappensFunBlackWhitePoorAcceptingStruggleRichWrittenModernLong TimeOrdinaryProductionsRingsContemporaryAll KindsBest ThingsBellsLong Time AgoSimilarityRecessionsGreat DepressionGrandpaBlack Or WhiteRich Or PoorAccentuateLoving FamilyGreat Recession
Author:Chris Hart
Create image

“I would imagine that anyone picking up a book written by me would expect a fast-paced story that requires minimal effort to turn the pages. The reader would also be looking for some out-of-the-ordinary revelations along the way. At the end of the day, I'm a writer who simply loves revealing stuff that is out-of-the-ordinary.”

WayBookEndsStoriesTurnsStuffEffortImagineWrittenReaderPagesOrdinaryRevelationsThe End Of The DayImagine ThatRevealingFast PacedSimply LoveMinimal Effort
Author:Ashwin Sanghi
Create image

“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost.”

WorldNeedsHeartHas BeensEndsPlayUseFacesPoorMankindGeniusOrdinaryUglyTricksGhostUnhappyPityCurseEmpiresOperaDistinguishedCellars
Book:THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Mystery & Horror Series): Gothic Classic Based on True Events at the Paris Opera
Create image

“Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”

FirstsEndsLyingOpportunityCommunityProductsLuckyOrdinaryAdvantageEntrepreneurCriticalMathLawyerMysteriousLegacySoftwareGroundedExceptionalInheritanceSuperstarOutliers
Author:Malcolm Gladwell
Create image

“I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.”

PeopleIfsMenLongEndsPlayHateGamesOrdinaryI HateFellowsIf I CouldGood ManKnives
Book:JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated): Scottish Poems, World War I Books & Mystery Novels like Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Huntingtower, No Man’s Land, Prester John and many more
Create image

“One thing we've learned this summer is that a house is not an end in itself, any more than "home" is just one geographic location where things feel safe and familiar. Home can be anyplace in which we create our own sense of rest and peace as we tend to the spaces in which we eat and sleep and play. It is a place that we create and re-create in every moment, at every stage of our lives, a place where the plain and common becomes cherished and the ordinary becomes sacred.”

FeelsEndsPlayMomentsHomeHouseSleepSpaceCommonOur LivesOne ThingStageSafeSummerOrdinarySacredFamiliarJust OneLocationRest And Peace
Author:Katrina Kenison
Create image

“The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one that looks as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more stairways than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”

KnowsHumansLooksLittlesHas BeensBookEndsMatterBigsTruthEnergyBlackSpaceKnow HowDoorsTruth IsMassOrdinaryHolesCollectionsRelevantShelvesOld FashionedEquationsBad DayBlack HoleBookshopsStairwaysPower Of KnowledgeEscher
Author:Terry Pratchett
Create image

“Patience is a godly attribute that can heal souls, unlock treasures of knowledge and understanding, and transform ordinary men and women into saints and angels. Patience is truly a fruit of the Spirit. Patience means staying with something until the end. It means delaying immediate gratification for future blessings.”

MenMeanSoulEndsSpiritUnderstandingBlessingOrdinaryMen And WomenAngelFruitSaintTreasureHealStayingAttributesGodlyGratificationOrdinary ManKnowledge And UnderstandingFruits Of The SpiritImmediate Gratification
Author:Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Create image

“And they both began to laugh over nothing as children will when they are happy together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old creatures—instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die.”

IfsYearsChildrenLittlesTwoEndsHardTogetherDiesGirlNaturalBoysLaughingHealthyTenCreaturesOrdinaryNoiseLaughedHappy Together
Book:The Secret Garden
Create image

“It seems probable to me that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which He formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them, even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God had made one in the first creation.”

FirstsMadeEndsMatterHardGodBodySeemsAbleScienceSpaceBreakPiecesFiguresCreationOrdinaryHarderPropertySizeProportionDividesAtomsPrimitiveParticles
Book:Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World
Create image

“For far too long the world's poorest people have seen no benefit from the vast natural resources in their own backyards. It is time to end the injustice where ordinary people are silent witnesses, left to suffer without basic services, as the profits from their countries' assets are hidden and plundered by corrupt regimes.”

PeopleWorldLongEndsCountrySufferingLeftNaturalBenefitsOrdinaryResourcesSilentInjusticeProfitWitnessAssetsRegimesOrdinary PeoplePoorestNatural ResourcesBackyards
Author:Nick Clegg
Create image

“Success only means doing something sincerely and wholeheartedly. I think life is a process. Through the ages, the end of heroes is the same as ordinary men. They all died and gradually faded away in the memory of man. But when we are still alive, we have to understand ourselves, discover ourselves and express ourselves. In this way, we can progress, but we may not be successful.”

ThinkingMenWayLifeMayMeanStillsEndsAgeSuccessLife IsProcessMemoriesSuccessfulAliveProgressHeroOrdinaryDiedBeing SuccessfulSincerelyFadedOrdinary ManSuccessful LifeWholeheartedly
Author:Bruce Lee
Create image

“The instrument by which it [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!”

IfsFirstsEndsGovernmentLastsLawForceLibertyAuthorityOrdinaryInstrumentsDestroyed
Book:The works of Alexander Hamilton: comprising his correspondence, and his political and official writings, exclusive of the Federalist, civil and military. Published from the original manuscripts deposited in the Department of State, by order of the Joint Library Committee of Congress
Create image