“To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly.... My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.” PeopleGivingCharacterLastsForgetPiecesHappenedAdviceFailureGoes OnBearsOrdinaryProofFancyOrdinary LifeMortification Author:W. Somerset Maugham
“I don't really know that this story has a whole lot of things happen in it. It doesn't really. It's just a record of how things were in my life during this last winter. I guess things happened, but nothing out of the ordinary.” KnowsWholeStoriesHappensLastsRecordsHappenedOrdinaryWinterThings Happen Author:Markus Zusak
“The thing that seemed to me so important about the psychedelic experience was that it happened to me. I wasn't reading John Chrysostom or Meister Eckhart. And so I assumed that I am a very ordinary person, therefore, if it happened to me it could happen to anyone.” IfsPersonsImportantHappensReadingHappenedOrdinaryPsychedelicPsychedelic ExperienceOrdinary Person Author:Terence McKenna
“Time in China has no immediacy as in America. Here I find the swift passage of our few earthly years accepted as naturally as the fall of flower and leaf. ... I hear and speak a language in which grammar has no tense. Both scholars and illiterates, in ordinary daily speech, tell an event of centuries ago as casually as an incident of the hour. Only as my knowledge has accumulated have I been able to know whether something related happened just then or in some past dynasty.” KnowsYearsAbleAmericaPastTimeFallSpeakLanguageHoursHappenedCenturyEventsFlowerSpeechOrdinaryChinaAcceptedRelatedPassagesScholarLeafsGrammarIncidentsTenseDynastyImmediacy Author:Nora Waln
“Expectations are usually predicated on the idea that the everyday things that happen to ordinary people shouldn't happen to you. People hold the idea of being ordinary in absolute contempt, so when they face an illness, poverty, or any kind of catastrophe, they say, 'I can't believe this happened to me.' And who did you think it was going to happen to - the woman across the street?” PeopleThinkingBelieveKindI CanIdeasHappensFacesPovertyHappenedStreetsOrdinaryExpectationsAbsolutesEverydayIllnessContemptCatastropheOrdinary PeopleOrdinarinessEveryday Things Author:Caroline Myss
“The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself?...a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller.” TryingPersonsDoeBookMomentsStoriesSeemsRealizingPerfectCasesHappenedCenturyGrewOrdinaryAccountsRegardCleverNakedAdamStoryteller20th CenturyGenesisModernismAdam And EveAllegoryFigsBook Of GenesisClever Person Author:Philip Pullman
“In a sense I am able to interrogate myself, address myself from that slight distance and enter a kind of dialogical relationship with myself. Because I'm saying, "Look, these are things that have happened to me, but how odd they are or how ordinary they are [is up to the reader to decide]."” LooksKindAbleHappenedReaderOrdinaryDistanceOddAddresses Author:Paul Auster
“The interesting thing about Hain is that he's not a very interesting character. He's not fabulously clever. He's not a great policeman. He's not hugely charismatic. I'd describe him as a kind-of Chekhovian character. He's an ordinary bloke, to whom extraordinary things have happened. Which is quite hard to play, I have to say.” KindHardPlayCharacterInterestingHappenedOrdinaryExtraordinaryCleverVery InterestingPolicemenInteresting ThingsCharismaticExtraordinary ThingsInteresting CharactersBlokes Author:Robbie Coltraine
“Anytime you do something out of the ordinary, there will be skeptics. Everyone wants a reason why. That's fine. What's happened with me is just an accumulation of a lot of things.” WantReasonHappenedFineOrdinaryReason WhyAccumulationSkeptic Author:Brian Roberts
“There are moments, moments of fun but it's never necessarily a wink/wink. It's just interesting and odd and crazy things happen inside the world just like a crazy thing happened inside our world. So we don't shy away from that stuff. We take semi-ordinary characters, even though they have their own skill sets, we take those guys and we drop them into extraordinary situations and watch how the get out of them.” WorldMomentsCharacterHappensGuyFunStuffInterestingSituationWatchesHappenedCrazySkillsOrdinaryExtraordinaryThings HappenOddShyOur WorldCrazy Things Author:Todd Farmer
“I asked a lot of friends and people I'd meet, "Can you tell me a story of a micro-aggression that happened to you in a place you didn't expect it to happen?" I wasn't interested in scandal, or outrageous moments. I was interested in the surprise of the intimate, or the surprise of the ordinary.” PeopleMomentsStoriesHappensHappenedOrdinarySurpriseIntimateAggressionScandalOutrageousLots Of Friends Author:Claudia Rankine
“Expectations are usually predicated on the idea that the everyday things that happen to ordinary people shouldn't happen to you. People hold the idea of being ordinary in absolute contempt, so when they face an illness, poverty, or any kind of catastrophe, they say, "I can't believe this happened to me." And who did you think it was going to happen to - the woman across the street? It makes them think, "I must be on the wrong path." But what if something you thought was bad was the best thing that ever happened to you? What if that was part of your path?” PeopleIfsThinkingBelieveKindI CanIdeasHappensFacesPovertyPathHappenedStreetsOrdinaryExpectationsAbsolutesEverydayIllnessBest ThingsWhat IfContemptCatastropheOrdinary PeopleWrong PathEveryday Things Author:Caroline Myss
“If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.” IfsFirstsLightFoundDarknessHappenedOrdinaryLensesArcsGlare Book:The Shipping News: A Novel Source: The Shipping News: A Novel
“What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It's for the person who reads it to have the feeling . . . In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. "Ordinary" is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. (p. 176)” PeopleWantFeelsPersonsDoneStoriesFeelingsTalkingCasesHappenedAirListeningOrdinaryExtraordinaryFeel GoodInterviewsEncountersOrdinary PeopleLoatheExtraordinary ThingsOrdinary PersonPatronizing Author:Studs Terkel
“If 'ecstasy' meant the sudden intrusion of the sacred into the ordinary, then it had just happened to me.” IfsHappenedOrdinarySacredEcstasyIntrusion Book:Cutting for Stone Source: Cutting for Stone
“But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig." "Well", said Mrs. Zuckerman, "it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.” WellsLittlesSaidSeemsHappenedMiddleOrdinaryMiracleMysteriousFarmsPigsSpidersWell Said Author:E. B. White
“It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.” WritingYearsHandsMovingUsedHappenedNew YorkPaperOrdinaryYears AgoSticksUsed To BePensNailsAprilCalendarsNineteenOrdinary Days Author:Donna Tartt