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Ordinary Quotes

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Ordinary Quotes

“Poetry is the alchemy which teaches us to convert ordinary materials into gold.”

Teach Materials Ordinary Gold Poetry Is Alchemy

Author:Anais Nin

“Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art.”

Men Art Two Three Ability Talent He Man Materials Genius Ten Perception Ordinary Capacity Plus Multiple Register Ordinary Man

Author:Ezra Pound

“Logical investigations can obviously be a useful tool for philosophy. They must, however, be informed by a sensitivity to the philosophical significance of the formalism and by a generous admixture of common sense, as well as a thorough understanding both of the basic concepts and of the technical details of the formal material used. It should not be supposed that the formalism can grind out philosophical results in a manner beyond the capacity of ordinary philosophical reasoning. There is no mathematical substitute for philosophy.”

“The trouble is that the expression 'material thing' is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for 'sense-datum'; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he 'perceives.”

Men Trying Kind Play Given Roles Trouble Expression Materials Perception Ordinary Data Perceive Consideration Material Things Ordinary Man Foils

Author:J. L. Austin

“Warhol came from an ordinary family and he had a profound understanding about capitalism and material culture. He was probably one of the few Western artists - or artists from the United States - that could be considered a true product of his time and brought out that kind of spirit of the culture.”

Kind States Spirit Artist Culture Understanding United United States Materials Products Ordinary Capitalism Profound Western Warhol

Author:Ai Weiwei

“To transcend means to "go beyond," but this need not compel us to an ornate dualist view that regards transcendent levels of reality (e.g., the spiritual level) to be not of this world. We can "go beyond" the "ordinary" powers of the material world through the power of patterns. Rather than a materialist, I would prefer to consider myself a "patternist." It's through the emergent powers of the pattern that we transcend.”

World Needs Mean Reality Spiritual Levels Views This World Materials Ordinary Regard Patterns Transcendent Material World

Author:Ray Kurzweil

“Ordinary citizens are so accepting of what is going on, grumbling when their material interests were affected, but seemingly accepting the spiritual poverty so characteristic of today.”

Today Spiritual Interest Accepting Poverty Materials Citizens Ordinary Characteristics Affected Ordinary Citizens Grumbling

Author:Charles Handy

“Why do people think the spiritual life demands withdrawal from the ordinary? Because they've been taught, at least by implication, that the physical is a block to the spiritual. When we assume that the spiritual, unlike the physical, is impervious to corrosion, then we assume that all things material are not to be honored. But the fact of the matter is, the material is the vehicle of the spiritual.”

People Thinking Matter Facts Spiritual Taught Materials Demand Ordinary All Things Assuming Block Spiritual Life Vehicle Honored Implications Withdrawal Impervious

Author:Joan D. Chittister

“Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.”

World Way Mean Book Whole Cases Materials Discipline Ordinary Understood Philosophical West Available Intellect East Have Faith Scholar Sufi East And West Working Life Book Learning

Book:The Sufis

Source: The Sufis

“The debut show, “Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary,” is supposed to be about how artists reuse humble or unusual materials. There’s good work here, but much of what’s on view is actually more about obsession and repetition: a couch made out of 3,500 quarters, a necklace composed of 100 handgun triggers. The building, too, seems caught between wanting to be an object of decorative delectation and making an architectural statement.”

“If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?”

Ifs Literature Materials Prove Draws Ordinary Advantage Vegetarian Creeds Dirtiness

Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays

Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays

“[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.”

Men Kind Stories Jobs Novel Materials Ordinary Myth Transformed Epic Great Poetry

Author:Milan Kundera

“I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things—the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos—are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul.”

“Not material or economic conditions in the ordinary sense, but perverse religious ideas explain the suspension of civilization in Europe from the 5th to the 12th century, and in the Mohammedan world after the 15th century.”

World Ideas Religion Religious Economic Conditions Century Materials Civilization Ordinary Europe Suspension

Book:Great Ideas Made Simple

Source: Great Ideas Made Simple

“All classes of people under social pressure are permeated with a common experience; they are emotionally welded as others cannot be. With them, even ordinary living has epic depth and lyric intensity, and this, their material handicap, is their spiritual advantage.”

People Spiritual Social Justice Common Class Materials Diversity Ordinary Advantage Pressure Social Justice Depth Intensity Epic Handicaps Social Pressure Common Experience

Book:Crit Temp Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture

Source: Crit Temp Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture

“"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."”