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Ordinary Quotes

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Ordinary Quotes

“The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore.”

Problem Night Pleasure Mystery Streets Shapes Summer Ordinary Rain Empty Absolutes Luminous Skates Odor Pittsburgh Maple Summer Rain Empty Streets

Book:The Dance Most of All: Poems

Source: The Dance Most of All: Poems

“Although the semicircle of the Moon is placed above the circle of the Sun and would appear to be superior, nevertheless we know that the Sun is ruler and King. We see that the Moon in her shape and her proximity rivals the Sun with her grandeur, which is apparent to ordinary men, yet the face, or a semi-sphere of the Moon, always reflects the light of the Sun.”

Knows Men Light Faces Sun Kings Shapes Moon Ordinary Circles Superiors Spheres Rulers Nevertheless Rivals Grandeur Ordinary Man Proximity

Book:The Hieroglyphic Monad

Source: The Hieroglyphic Monad

“We can begin a discussion of artmaking by noting that from very early (as long ago as 200,000 years), humans have been naturally attracted to the extraordinary as a dimension of experience and that at some point they seem also to have been moved to make the ordinary extraordinary-that is, to shape or elaborate everyday, mundane reality and thereby transform it into something special, different from the everyday.”

“Writing is both the excursion into and the excursion out of one's life. That is the queasy paradox of the artistic life. It is the thing that, like love, removes one both painfully and deliciously from the ordinary shape of existence. It joins another queasy paradox: that life is an amazing, hilarious, blessed gift and that it is also intolerable.”

Writing Art Life Is Existence Shapes Ordinary Blessed Artistic Remove Paradox Like Love Excursions Artistic Life

Author:Lorrie Moore

“You'll never be a perfect parent, but you can be a praying parent. Prayer is your highest privilege as a parent. ...Prayer turns ordinary parents into prophets who shape the destinies of their children, grandchildren, and every generation that follows. ...Your prayers for your children are the greatest legacy you can leave.”

Children Turns Parent Prayer Perfect Destiny Generations Praying Shapes Highest Ordinary Our Children Privilege Legacy Your Children Prophet Grandchildren Our Prayers Perfect Parents

Author:Mark Batterson

“What we can do is to shape how that process of global integration proceeds, so that it's increasing opportunity for ordinary people, so that it's creating better jobs, so that we are strengthening protections for workers, so that we are addressing some of the environmental challenges that come with rapid growth.”

“A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.”

Artist Color Shapes Ordinary Garden Plant Intention Complexes Landscape Unusual Aesthetic Gardening Plastic Volume Doomed True Happiness Disappearance

Author:Roberto Burle Marx

“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.”

People Giving Matter Found Millions Imagine Effects Events Shapes Ordinary Caught Melody Caught Up Ordinary People Great Events

Book:Ender's Game Boxed Set I: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon

Source: Ender's Game Boxed Set I: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon

“But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.”

World Heart May Children Hard Body Hurt Forever This World Shapes Ordinary Misery Seeds Curious Delicate Organs Twists Shrinks Small Child Peaches Ordinary Things

Book:The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

Source: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

“I sing of a woman with ink on her hands and pictures hidden beneath her hair. I sing of a dog with skin like velvet pushed the wrong way.I sing of the shape a fallen body makes in the dirt beneath a tree, and I sing of an ordinary man who is wanted to know things no human being could tell him.This is the true beginning.”

Knows Men Way Humans Body Hands Wanted Human Beings Tree Dog Hair Shapes Ordinary Skins Fallen Dirt Ink Wrong Way Velvet Ordinary Man

Book:The Dogs of Babel

Source: The Dogs of Babel

“I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not.”

Accepting Shapes Ordinary

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“He gazed amusedly down the table at Tessa. “You’re the shape-changer, aren’t you?” he said. “Magnus Bane told me about you. No mark on you at all, they say.” Tessa swallowed and looked him straight in the eye. They were discordantly human eyes, ordinary in his extraordinary face. “No. No mark.” He grinned around his fork. “I do suppose they’ve looked everywhere?” “I’m sure Will’s tried,” said Jessamine in a bored tone.”

Humans Said Eye Faces Shapes Ordinary Mark Tables Extraordinary Bored Tone Forks Magnus Bane Bane Human Eyes

Author:Cassandra Clare

“But the World being once fram'd, and the course of Nature establish'd, the Naturalist, (except in some few cases, where God, or Incorporeal Agents interpose), has recourse to the first Cause but for its general and ordinary Support and Influence, whereby it preserves Matter and Motion from Annihilation or Desition; and in explicating particular phenomena, considers onely the Size, Shape, Motion, (or want of it) Texture, and the resulting Qualities and Attributes of the small particles of Matter.”

Source: Boyle on Atheism

“"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."”