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Ordinary Quotes

“We're nothing if we're not loved. When you meet somebody who is more important to you than yourself, that has to be the most important thing in life, really. And I think we are all striving for it in different ways. I also believe very, very strongly that everybody is the hero/heroine of his/her own life. I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters”

PeopleIfsThinkingWayTryingBelieveKindImportantDifferentCharacterLossHeroOrdinaryImportant ThingsStriveRelateDifferent WaysThings In LifeHeroinesLove And LossMost Important Things In LifePerhaps Love
Author:Maeve Binchy
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“She conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, waiting.”

PeopleCountryEnoughLightTogetherHouseLostEasyWaitingRoomsOrdinaryStandingDistanceDestinationBroadsTraveledRespectable
Author:Marilynne Robinson
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“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
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“I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true....If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldSoulShowsRememberMovingDiesLostSecretKnowingOrdinaryHundredSensesEndlessShow MeLimitlessVastness
Author:Amy Tan
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“Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.”

PeopleArtSometimesPassionLiteratureSecretMysteryEffectsOrdinaryIntellectVeilsOrdinary PeopleMystery Of Life
Book:The Essential Oscar Wilde
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“Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”

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Book:Second Glance
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“The city breathing, burning, living the life thy had preserved. Ten million lives and more. If something should happen to all that life - how terrible! Nita gulped for control as she remembered Fred's word of just this morning, an eternity ago. And this was what being a wizard was about. Keeping terrible things from happening, even when it hurts. Not just power, or control of what ordinary people couldn't control, or delight in being able to make strange things happen. Those were the side effects - not the reason, the purpose.”

PeopleIfsShouldReasonHappensAblePurposeSidesHurtCitiesMorningMillionsEffectsStrangeTerribleTenHappeningsOrdinaryEternityDelightThings HappenBurningBreathingLive LifeRememberedIt HurtsOrdinary PeopleWizardsTerrible ThingsStrange ThingsSide Effects
Author:Diane Duane
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“Deep within the individual is a vast reservoir of untapped power awaiting to be used. no person can have the use of all this potential until he learns to know his or her own self. the trouble with many people is that they got through life thinking and writing themselves off as ordinary commonplace persons. having no proper belief in themselves they live aimless and erratic lives largely because they never realize what their lives really can be or what they can become”

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Author:Norman Vincent Peale
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“For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events.”

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Book:Ender's Game Boxed Set I: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon
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“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

PeopleActionJobsProcessClearEffectsParticularNeededTerribleMoralityAuthorityStandardsOrdinaryResourcesFundamentalsAgentsObedienceDestructiveOrdinary PeopleHostilityObedience To Authority
Author:Stanley Milgram
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“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
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“We want to see a struggle. We want to see people falling over but getting themselves back up on their feet, and that's what's extraordinary- ordinary people and their struggle. There's nothing as interesting as real life out your window. You walk down the street for half an hour, I'll give you half an hour of drama.”

PeopleWantGivingRealFallHoursWalksInterestingHalfStruggleFeetStreetsDramaOrdinaryWindowExtraordinaryReal LifeOrdinary People
Author:Ricky Gervais
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“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”

PeopleIfsWorldLooksEarthOrderJusticeAnswersPoorGraceHavensThis WorldWillingDespairHappeningsOrdinaryOptimisticDataOddsOrdinary PeoplePulsePessimisticSemblance
Author:Paul Hawken
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“There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.”

PeopleWorldWayMaySometimesLightPainSpiritSufferingForceLosesAnswersPowerfulHealingDarknessToo MuchThis WorldOrdinarySightExtraordinaryEncountersOrdinary People
Author:Mother Teresa
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“I hate ordinary people!”

PeopleHateOrdinaryI HateOrdinary People
Book:Greatest Christmas Novels in One Volume: Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Heidi, The Romance of a Christmas Card, The Little City of Hope, The Wonderful Life, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Peter Pan…
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“The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.”

PeopleTryingGivenHalfPovertyBehaviorNormalStandardsOrdinaryMadParisFallenDecentSolitaryGatheringGiven UpEccentricGrooveSlumsGathering Places
Book:The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage
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“The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class. That is why every newly minted constable, regardless of their educational background, has to spend a two-year probationary period as an ordinary plod on the streets. This is because nothing builds character like being abused, spat at and vomited by members of the public.”

PeopleThinkingYearsStillsTwoCharacterClassStreetsPeriodsMembersOrdinaryPoliceNotionEducationalBackgroundsDespiteRejectsTwo YearsOfficersWorking ClassOrganisationSpatsMetropolitanEducational Background
Author:Ben Aaronovitch
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“You never know," Jack said speculatively. "There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren't in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that - a time when towns in England don't need walls!”

PeopleThinkingKnowsNeedsMaySaidWarLawWallKingsProtectOrdinaryEnglandTownsSavagesOrdinary PeopleMaking Peace
Book:Ken Follett EPIC HISTORICAL COLLECTION
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“Clary, you're an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy — just different. There's nothing wrong with being different.”

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Book:Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls
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“Had it taken her this long to discover that she lacked some simple mental trick that everyone else had, a mechanism so ordinary that no one ever mentioned it, an immediate sensual connection to people and events, and to her own needs and desires? All these years she had lived in isolation within herself and, strangely, from herself, never wanting or daring to look back.”

PeopleNeedsYearsLooksLongDesireSimpleTakenEventsOrdinaryConnectionsTricksSensualIsolationMechanismDaring
Author:Ian Mcewan
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“Unfortunately, the world has taken some of the greatest minds God has given us and locked them up in cages. Most very brilliant or creative people seem strange to ordinary people. Geniuses are almost always outcasts. The intelligent are bullied on the playground. They see the world differently and are shunned for it. They nearly all turn out to be lonely at the least, locked up at the worst. It's human nature to encourage the status quo and shun those who see life differently.”

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Author:Ted Dekker
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“The theater troubled her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.”

PeopleKnowsWorldSaidMagicChangedOrdinaryTheaterOrdinary PeopleAltered
Book:Wyrd Sisters: (Discworld Novel 6)
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“Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

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Author:William Martin
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