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Ordinary Quotes

“Eating, drinking, dying - three primary manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and, if they think seriously about it, refuse to accept it. An enlightened person knows it, lives it, and accepts it completely. He eats, he drinks, and in due course he dies - but he eats with a difference, drinks with a difference, dies with a difference.”

“If you truly want to escape the ordinary, you'll simply need to keep evolving. Whether what you seek is above or below.”

Ifs Want Needs Ordinary Evolve

Book:Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (light novel)

Source: Durarara!!, Vol. 1 (light novel)

“Body tension will always be present if our good feeing is just ordinary, self-centered happiness. Joy has no tension in it, because joy accepts whatever is as it is.”

Ifs Self Body Joy Accepting Ordinary Tension Self Centered

Author:Joko Beck

“The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.”

Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have (Gift Edition)

“I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds, I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for -- even if it's just a better tomorrow -- is the most powerful drug on this planet.”

Source: The Storyteller

“They say you cannot love two people equally at once,” she said. “And perhaps for others that is so. But you and Will—you are not like two ordinary people, two people who might have been jealous of each other, or who would have imagined my love for one of them diminished by my love of the other. You merged your souls when you were both children. I could not have loved Will so much if I had not loved you as well. And I could not love you as I do if I had not loved Will as I did.”

Source: Clockwork Princess

“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.”

Ifs Years Children Littles Two Ends Hard Together Dies Girl Natural Boys Laughing Healthy Ten Creatures Ordinary Noise Laughed Happy Together

Book:The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

“A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions (...) if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life. #Page no.134”

Ifs Men Trying Loses Failing Ambition Pages Ordinary Deserve Accounts Fortune Satisfaction Observation Admiration Looking Back Aspire Mediocre Consolation Rise Above

Author:Kazuo Ishiguro

“The ordinary, utterly mundane reason behind the massacre makes it somehow more terrible, and far more depressing. The word 'senseless' springs to mind, and Idris thwarts it. It's what people always say. A senseless act of violence. A senseless murder. As if you could commit sensible murder.”

People Ifs Mind Reason Behinds Violence Terrible Spring Ordinary Murder Commit Sensible Depressing Mundane Massacres Acts Of Violence

Book:And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Marriage: If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently. You shield it and protect it. You never abuse it. You don't expose it to the elements. You don't make it common or ordinary. If it ever becomes tarnished, you lovingly polish it until it gleams like new. It becomes special because you have made it so, and it grows more beautiful and precious as time goes by.”

“A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting... Thus a man of knowledge sweats and puffs and if one looks at him he is just like an ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under his control.”

Ifs Thinking Men Looks Life Is Acting Knowledge Ordinary Folly Live By Sweat Ordinary Man Puff

Author:Carlos Castaneda

“We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.”

People Ifs Knows Life Heart Persons Matter Facts Bigs Certain Ordinary Capacity Ideals Affection Vices Delight Enormous Absurd Intensity Matter Of Fact Exclusion

Author:William James

“There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented ... The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.”

Ifs Thinking Men Has Beens War Facts Peace Common Ordinary Folks Protection Antiwar Common Man Against War

Author:Ernest Bevin

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ verse latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

People Ifs Way Wisdom Christian Next Christ Objects Holy Glory Ordinary Blessed Mere Neighbor Senses Mortals Verses Sacraments Ordinary People Blessed Sacrament Mere Mortals

Author:C. S. Lewis

“I'm proof that great things can happen to ordinary people if they work hard and never give up.”

People Ifs Giving Hard Happens Sports Effort Hard Work Giving Up Ordinary Perseverance Athlete Proof Great Things Persistence Motivational Sports Never Giving Up Ordinary People

Book:Out of the Blue

Source: Out of the Blue

“If Christians were Christians, there would be no anti-Semitism. Jesus was a Jew. There is nothing that the ordinary Christian so dislikes to remember as this awkward historical fact.”

Ifs Facts Would Be Christian Remember Jesus Justice Diversity Ordinary Social Justice Historical Jew Dislike Awkward Anti Semitism Historical Facts

Author:John Haynes Holmes

“It is not till it is discovered that high individual incomes will not purchase the mass of mankind immunity from cholera, typhus, and ignorance, still less secure them the positive advantages of educational opportunity and economic security, that slowly and reluctantly, amid prophecies of moral degeneration and economic disaster, society begins to make collective provision for needs which no ordinary individual, even if he works overtime all his life, can provide himself.”

“Suicidal thinking, if serious, can be a kind of death scare, comparable to suffering a heart attack or undergoing a cancer operation. One survives such a phase both warier and chastened. When-ten years ago-I emerged from a bad dip into suicidal speculation, I felt utterly exhausted and yet quite fearless of ordinary dangers, vastly afraid of myself but much less scared of extraneous eventualities.”

Source: Tigers & Ice: Reflections on Nature and Life

“When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice.”

Ifs Together Voice Talent Ordinary Latin Evident Caution Elegance Niceties

Author:Horace

“If you want to win, do the ordinary things better than anyone else does them day in and day out.”

Ifs Want Inspirational Doe Winning Sports Leadership Ordinary Coaches Nfl Motivational Sports Ordinary Things Coaches Motivational

Author:Chuck Noll

“Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy - common clay, if you like - eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others - the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes”

Source: Legend of lovers

“I think I usually have quite ordinary dreams. Sometimes my dreams take me to other dimensions. I can travel in my mind especially when I'm dreaming I focus my mind on what I want to dream. If I want to fly, I focus on flying.”

Ifs Thinking Want Mind I Can Sometimes Dream Focus Travel Ordinary Flying Dimensions Take Me Funny Travel

Author:Uri Geller

“Of Cooking. This is an art of various forms, the object of which is to give ordinary observations the appearance and character of those of the highest degree of accuracy. One of its numerous processes is to make multitudes of observations, and out of these to select only those which agree, or very nearly agree. If a hundred observations are made, the cook must be very unhappy if he cannot pick out fifteen or twenty which will do for serving up.”

Source: Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage

“A litterateur is not a confectioner, not a dealer in cosmetics, not an entertainer. . . . He is just like an ordinary reporter. What would you say if a newspaper reporter, because of his fastidiousness or from a wish to give pleasure to his readers, were to describe only honest mayors, high-minded ladies, and virtuous railroad contractors.”

Ifs Giving Wish Justice Pleasure Honest Honesty Reader Ordinary Newspapers Virtuous Reporters Entertainers Mayors Dealer Cosmetics Railroads Contractor Newspaper Reporters

Author:Anton Chekhov

“Their example testifies that Baptism commits Christians to participating courageously in the spreading of the Kingdom of God, if need be cooperating with the sacrifice of life itself... This martyrdom of ordinary life constitutes a particularly important witness in the secularized society of our time. It is the peaceful battle of love which every Christian, like Paul, must fight without flagging: the race to spread the Gospel that involves us until our death. May the Virgin Mary, Queen of Martyrs and Star of Evangelization, help us in our daily witness.”

“This is the way of meditation: encountering the present in all its tremendous beauty, just being in the present. Inside, the mind stops. Outside, the world changes totally. It is no more the ordinary world you have known before. In fact, you have not known it at all. Your mind was distorting everything, your mind was creating fantasies. Your eyes were full of fantasies and you were looking though those fantasies. They never allowed you to see that which is. If the mind is gone, even for a moment, suddenly the whole existence explodes upon you.”

Ifs World Way Mind Whole Moments Facts Eye Existence Known Beauty Fantasy Gone Meditation Creating Ordinary Just Being Ordinary World

Author:Rajneesh

“If governments were kind, they'd realize that conficts are resolved and wars prevented not by armies but by ordinary people.”

People Ifs Kind War Government Realizing Ordinary Army Resolve Resolution Ordinary People Win Win

Author:Scilla Elworthy

“Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being.”

Ifs Made Universe Existence Creation Evolution Periods Six Ordinary Consequence Difficulty Appearance Former Volition Conceiving

Author:Thomas Huxley

“I don't want to be considered a hero.... Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary.”

People Ifs Want Humans Helping Feelings Young Grows Growing Up Imagine Duty Hero Ordinary Helping Others Heroic Secretary Housewife

Author:Miep Gies

“The cause of rain is now, I consider, no longer an object of doubt. If two masses of air of unequal temperatures, by the ordinary currents of the winds, are intermixed, when saturated with vapour, a precipitation ensues. If the masses are under saturation, then less precipitation takes place, or none at all, according to the degree. Also, the warmer the air, the greater is the quantity of vapour precipitated in like circumstances. ... Hence the reason why rains are heavier in summer than in winter, and in warm countries than in cold.”

“The first "station of separation" corresponds to the state of the ordinary man who perceives the universe as distinct from God. Starting from here, the initiatic itinerary leads the being first to extinction in the divine Unity, which abolishes all perception of created things. But spiritual realization, if it is complete, arrives afterwards at the "second station of separation" where the being perceives simultaneously the one in the multiple and the multiple in the one.”

“If you have someone that you think is The One, don't just sort of think in your ordinary mind, 'Okay, let's pick a date. Let's plan this and make a party and get married.' Take that person and travel around the world. Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all around the world, and go to places that are hard to go to and hard to get out of. And if when you come back to JFK, when you land in JFK, and you're still in love with that person, get married at the airport.”

Ifs Thinking World Love Mind Persons Stills Two Hard Party Plans Land Married Ordinary Picks Okay Around The World Planes Tickets Airports Still In Love

Author:Bill Murray

“The ordinary patient goes to his doctor because he is in pain or some other discomfort and wants to be comfortable again; he is not in pursuit of the ideal of health in any direct sense. The doctor on the other hand wants to discover the pathological condition and control it if he can. The two are thus to some degree at cross purposes from the first, and unless the affair is brought to an early and happy conclusion this diversion of aims is likely to become more and more serious as the case goes on.”

“None of us is born thinking we are ordinary. Feeling special is an essential part of the human birthright. If you don't think you are special, you won't seek to contribute your gift to the world.”

Ifs Thinking World Humans Feelings Born Special Inspirational Life Essentials Ordinary Birthright Special You

Book:Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life

Source: Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life

“You should never settle for what you think is just good. You should drive the editors and writers and everybody nuts until it's great. And if you don't go for great, you won't end up with good. You've got to go beyond your wildest dreams because the exigencies of filmmaking are going to smash you into the ordinary.”

Ifs Thinking Should Art Ends Dream Motivation Ordinary Settling Editors Nuts Filmmaking Wildest Dreams Never Settle

Author:Fred Schepisi

“Every writer must acknowledge and be able to handle the unalterable fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary confinement. The ordinary world of work is closed to him - and that if he's lucky!”

Ifs World Writing Facts Able Given Effects Lucky Ordinary Sentences Handle Acknowledge Solitary Confinement Solitary Confinement Ordinary World

Author:Peter Straub

“"You know you are seeing such a photograph if you say to yourself, "I could have taken that picture. I've seen such a scene before, but never like that." It is the kind of photography that relies for its strengths not on special equipment or effects but on the intensity of the photographer's seeing. It is the kind of photography in which the raw materials-light, space, and shape-are arranged in a meaningful and even universal way that gives grace to ordinary objects."”

“If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear. People who can open to the web of life that called us into being”

People Ifs World Love Humans Life Is Effort Greater Ordinary True Love Climate Change Convinced This Life Ordinary People Healed Web Of Life

Author:Joanna Macy

“I think that the ordinary bloke has an instinctive sense that it wouldn't be too bad if the weather warmed up.”

Ifs Thinking Ordinary Climate Change Weather Blokes

Author:Nigel Lawson

“The economic expansion that began in 2001, while it has been great for corporate profits, has yet to produce any significant gains for ordinary working Americans. And now it looks as if it never will.”

Ifs Looks Has Beens Environment Economic Produce Ordinary Gains Profit Significant Corporate Expansion

Author:Paul Krugman

“Haemoglobin is a very large molecule by ordinary standards, containing about ten thousand atoms, but the chances are that your haemoglobin and mine are identical, and significantly different from that of a pig or horse. You may be impressed by how much human beings differ from one another, but if you were to look into the fine details of the molecules of which they are constructed, you would be astonished by their similarity.”

“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!”

Ifs Firsts Ends Government Lasts Law Force Liberty Authority Ordinary Instruments Destroyed

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

Source: 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

“If it were possible to transfer the methods of physical or of biological science directly to the study of man, the transfer would long ago have been made ... We have failed not for lack of hypotheses which equate man with the rest of the universe, but for lack of a hypothesis (short of animism) which provides for the peculiar divergence of man ... Let me now state my belief that the peculiar factor in man which forbids our explaining his actions upon the ordinary plane of biology is a highly specialized and unstable biological complex, and that this factor is none other than language.”

“I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.”

“If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer...When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep...An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.”

People Ifs Knows May Artist Felt Rocks Regret Duty Citizens Ordinary Sorry Burden Singers Songwriting Rock N Roll I'm Sorry Ordinary Citizens

Author:Patti Smith

“Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues, and careful in speaking about them, if, in his practice, he has anything defective, the superior man dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license.”

Ifs Men Character Practice Virtue Ordinary Careful Dare Superiors Excess Earnest License Defective Superior Man Confucianism

Book:Delphi Collected Works of Confucius - Four Books and Five Classics of Confucianism (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Collected Works of Confucius - Four Books and Five Classics of Confucianism (Illustrated)

“That's what I am, Frank thought, an ordinary genius. He had unlocked the secret of radio. The sport of the ordinary! Brillliant me like Reed Seymour couldn't figure this out for the life of them! Reed was ashamed of radio. ...radio was a cinch if you kept reaching down and grabbing up handfuls of the ordinary.”

Ifs Art Sports Secret Figures Genius Ordinary Down And Radio Ashamed Reaching Frank Handful Reeds Grabbing

Author:Garrison Keillor