Home / Topics / Ordinary Quotes

Ordinary Quotes

Browse 3099 quotes about Ordinary.

Ordinary Quotes

“I think the ordinary is a very under-exploited aspect of our lives because it is so familiar.”

Thinking Our Lives Ordinary Aspect Familiar

Author:Martin Parr

“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.”

“The familiar photographs that many people carry with them always obviously belong to the order of fetishes in the ordinary sense of the word.”

People Order Ordinary Photograph Familiar Fetish

Author:Christian Metz

“My work involves the physical manifestation of emotional reality. Thus, the invisible becomes visible; the normal, abnormal; and the familiar, unfamiliar. Ordinary life is an endless source of fascination to me in its ritualistic objects and behavior.”

Reality Life Is Objects Emotional Source Behavior Normal Ordinary Endless Invisible Familiar Manifestation Visible Fascination Unfamiliar Abnormal Ordinary Life

Author:Sandy Skoglund

“I was never conscious of filming except for when I was location scouting. In a way, that is the most important part of the entire process - and the most private. I'm so used to doing that alone. Unlike every other part, it's just me, alone, on location.It's very hard to describe what I'm looking for - something that feels both familiar and strange at the same time. It's not enough for it just to be strange or mysterious, it also has to feel very ordinary, very familiar, and very nondescript.”

Way Feels Important Hard Enough Used Process Strange Ordinary Conscious Familiar Mysterious Location Me Alone Scouting

Author:Gregory Crewdson

“What I think the appeal of the [Donald] Trump program has been is that it offers some kind of concrete, specific, historically rooted, a familiar image of how ordinary Americans, regular Americans can earn their living.”

Thinking Kind Has Beens Trump Offers Ordinary Program Familiar Appeals Concrete Rooted

Author:Judy Woodruff

“Anyone who watches even the slightest amount of TV is familiar with the scene: An agent knocks on the door of some seemingly ordinary home or office. The door opens, and the person holding the knob is asked to identify himself. The agent then says, "I'm going to ask you to come with me.”

Persons Home Asks Watches Doors Tvs Amount Scene Office Ordinary Familiar Agents Knobs

Book:Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

“Ordinary folk prefer familiar tastes - they'd sooner eat the same things all the time - but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes.”

Knows Know How Food Taste Ordinary Folks Familiar Parks Benches Sample Gourmet Park Benches

Book:The Alchemaster's Apprentice: A Novel

Source: The Alchemaster's Apprentice: A Novel

“We say 'forest' but this word is made of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unencompassed. The earth. Clods of dirt. Pebbles. On a clear day you rest among ordinary, everyday things that have been familiar to you since childhood, grass, bushes, a dog (or a cat), a chair, but that changes when you realize that every object is an enormous army, an inexhaustible swarm.”

Has Beens Made Earth Realizing Clear Childhood Dog Objects Ordinary Cat Army Everyday Enormous Forests Familiar Grass Chairs Dirt Unfamiliar Pebbles Swarms Everyday Things Clear Day

Book:Cosmos: A Novel

Source: Cosmos: A Novel

“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.”

Feels Ends Play Moments Home House Sleep Space Common Our Lives One Thing Stage Safe Summer Ordinary Sacred Familiar Just One Location Rest And Peace

Author:Katrina Kenison

“The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.”

People Love Two Stories Together House Speak Language Lovers Ordinary Understood True Love Familiar Defined Intimacy Carrie Discourse Dictionary Familiarity Weaving Two Lovers

Author:Alain de Botton

“These phantoms speak with human voices — friendly, vapor- like shapes, without substance, able to vanish or appear at will, to pass in and out through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there. At times, voices come out of the air itself, clear yet far away, traveling through distances that can't be measured by the scale of human miles; familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.”

“Though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life.”

“The greatest dread of ordinary man is death, with its rude imposition interrupting fortuitous plans and fondest attachments with an unknown and unwelcome change. The yogi is a conqueror of the grief associated with death. By control of mind and life force and the development of wisdom, he makes friends with the change of consciousness called death-he becomes familiar with the state of inner calmness and aloofness from identification with the mortal body.”