“I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.” PeopleThinkingWantWritingTryingFirstsMeanIdeasCharacterCareSpeakLanguageCenturySpeechOrdinaryCriticsEveryday20th CenturyDelightedWordsworth Author:Louis Auchincloss
“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
“Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves toward the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a model of a possible way of interpreting experience. The further it goes in this direction, the more it tends to speak the language of mathematics, which is really one of the languages of the imagination, along with literature and music. Art, on the other hand, begins with the world we construct, not with the world we see. It starts with the imagination, and then works toward ordinary experience.” WorldWayTryingArtHandsMovingLawScienceLiteratureSpeakLanguageImaginationAcceptingModelsOrdinaryMathematicsDataConstructsInterpretingLiterature And Music Author:Northrop Frye
“It is notorious that we speak no more than half-truths in our ordinary conversation, and even a soliloquy is likely to be affected by the apprehension that walls have ears.” SpeakHalfWallConversationOrdinaryEarsAffectedApprehensionNotoriousHalf TruthWalls Have Ears Author:Eric Linklater
“We must remember when we speak of the "negativism" of the toddler that this is also the child who is intoxicated with the discoveries of the second year, a joyful child who is firmly bound to his parents and his new-found world through ties of love. The so-called negativism is one of the aspects of this development, but under ordinary circumstances it does not become anarchy. It's a kind of declaration of independence, but there is no intention to unseat the government.” WorldYearsKindChildrenDoeGovernmentRememberFoundSpeakParentDevelopmentCircumstancesOrdinaryDiscoveryAspectIndependenceIntentionBoundsTiesAnarchyJoyfulDeclarationRemember WhenDeclaration Of IndependenceToddlerIntoxicatedTies Of Love Author:Selma Fraiberg
“Prayer is such an ordinary, everyday, mundane thing. Certainly, people who pray are no more saints than the rest of us. Rather, they are people who want to share a life with God, to love and be loved, to speak and to listen, to work and to be at rest in the presence of God.” PeopleWantSpeakPrayerSharePrayingOrdinaryEverydaySaintMundanePraying To GodPresence Of God Author:Roberta Bondi
“When you speak of heaven, let your face light up; let it be irradiated by a heavenly gleam; let your eyes shine with reflected glory. But when you speak of hell, your ordinary expression will do.” LightEyeFacesSpeakHeavenHellExpressionGloryOrdinaryShiningHeavenlyYour FaceLight UpGleam Author:Charles Spurgeon
“I am gagged and imprisoned. I can't even speak. I want to kick a football in a park with my son. Ordinary, banal life: my impossible dream.” WantI CanDreamSpeakImpossibleFootballSonOrdinaryKicksParksMy SonImpossible Dream Book:Joseph Anton Source: Joseph Anton
“I don't understand writers who feel they shouldn't have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that... The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back.” ThinkingWorldFeelsActionSpeakOrdinaryDressesGood ThingsPlantThings To DoDrySaneCleanersOrdinary ThingsDry Cleaners Author:Nadine Gordimer
“I realise I'll have to acquire the ability to speak to my audience in between numbers. I've never had to do that. On the street I only focus on the keyboard settings for my next song, which takes a bit of time and a lot of concentration. So I'll have to develop that new skill, which gives me pause, because I'm afraid I'll say something stupid and disillusion people when they realise I'm an ordinary earthling - in fact, as ordinary as anyone else on this planet.” PeopleGivingFactsSongNextSpeakBitsAbilityNumbersAudienceFocusStreetsStupidPlanetsSkillsOrdinaryGive MeSettingSettingsAcquireConcentrationRealisingPausesKeyboardsDisillusionNew SkillsAbility To Speak Author:Susan Schneider
“When we speak of ordinary unqualified knowledge, my thought is that we are implicitly relativizing to the standards imposed by our evolution-derived humanity. These are standards that determine when we consider it appropriate to store beliefs just as a human being, rather than in one's capacity as an expert of one or another sort. Such stored beliefs are to be available for later use in one's own thought or in testimony to others.” HumansUseHumanityBeliefSpeakHuman BeingsEvolutionStandardsOrdinaryCapacityDetermineAvailableStoresExpertsAppropriateMy ThoughtsTestimonyUnqualified Author:Ernest Sosa
“People are hungry, and they're hurting and they're very, very worried about their children. Will their kids ever pay off their student debt? Will their kids ever get a decent-paying job? I think Democrats have got to be running a grass-roots campaign - mobilizing people and being prepared to take on the 1 percent with an agenda that speaks to the needs of ordinary workers.” PeopleThinkingNeedsChildrenRunningKidsJobsSpeakHurtPayStudentsOrdinaryPercentRootsPreparedDemocratWorkersDebtCampaignsHungryWorriedGrassDecentAgendas Author:Bernie Sanders
“We should assume that we all have a lot in common. Speak as if our views are the only sensible ones. This resonates with ordinary people, as long as we speak ordinary language and don't come across as elitists.” PeopleIfsShouldLongSpeakLanguageViewsCommonOrdinaryAssumingSensibleOrdinary PeopleElitist Author:Michael Yates
“And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God's language - it's better, it's finer, it's language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.” PeopleThinkingSpeakLanguageViewsPoetHigherOrdinaryPlanesDaily LifeOrdinary People Author:Stephen King
“If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.” PeopleIfsThinkingSpeakToo MuchOrdinaryComplainingOrdinary People Author:Michel de Montaigne
“Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.” SpeakPoorPartyClassMiddleOrdinaryClaimsDemocraticDemocratHeavyLawyerJournalistMiddle ClassAcademicElitesDemocratic PartyDetachedUpper Middle Class Author:Camille Paglia
“It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.” MindIdeasUniverseSpeakInterestCasesMeditationObjectsReaderOrdinaryUnderstoodNervousContemplationBuriedIntensityAdequate Book:Tales by Edgar Allan Poe Source: Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
“Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds.” MindChildrenSpeakOrdinaryAdultsGrayDenied Author:Jasper Fforde
“Historic figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart.” PeopleWritingHeartBookGodHomeMightWinningLeftSpeakReligiousLordFiguresOrdinaryBibleLibraryMemoirSpokesConquestHistoricOrdinary PeoplePosterity Author:Ravi Zacharias
“His [Death] voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty.” IfsFirstsHeartSeemsSongSpeakVoiceBreakTalentColdOrdinaryGoldPraiseSmallestBreak Your HeartUnfeelingOrdinary Love Author:Martine Leavitt
“The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.” PeopleLoveTwoStoriesTogetherHouseSpeakLanguageLoversOrdinaryUnderstoodTrue LoveFamiliarDefinedIntimacyCarrieDiscourseDictionaryFamiliarityWeavingTwo Lovers Author:Alain de Botton
“Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences -- good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as "ordinary courage.” ThinkingMindHeartTodayFormSpeakLevelsOpinionFailingChangedOrdinaryCommitmentRootsBraveDefinitionsDeedsHonestlyWho We AreInner StrengthLatinHeroicAssociatesGood And Bad Author:Brené Brown
“These phantoms speak with human voices — friendly, vapor- like shapes, without substance, able to vanish or appear at will, to pass in and out through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there. At times, voices come out of the air itself, clear yet far away, traveling through distances that can't be measured by the scale of human miles; familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life.” GivingHumansProblemAbleSpeakVoiceWallMessagesOrdinaryImportanceFamiliarFlightAviationAirplaneDiscussingPhantomsOrdinary LifeUnattainableReassuringNavigationHuman Voice Author:Charles Lindbergh
“Modern civilization is largely devoted to the pursuit of the cult of delusion. There is no general information about the nature of mind. It is hardly ever written about by writers or intellectuals; modern philosophers do not speak of it directly; the majority of scientists deny it could possibly be there at all. It plays no part in popular culture: no one sings about it, no one talks about it in plays, and it's not on TV. We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.” MindBelieveRealPlaySufferingCultureSpeakWrittenModernInformationTvsBuddhismCivilizationOrdinaryScientistMajorityPhilosopherDenyPursuitSensesEducatedPerceiveDelusionDevotedCultPopular CultureModern Civilization Author:Sogyal Rinpoche
“Is it not possible to look beyond the canes, the wheelchairs, the braces, and the crutches into the hearts of the people who have need of these aids? They are human beings and want only to be treated as ordinary people. They may appear different, move awkwardly, and speak haltingly, but they have the same feelings. ... They want to be loved for what they are inside, without any prejudice for their impairment. Can there not be more tolerance for differences-differences in capacity, differences in body and in mind?” PeopleWantNeedsMindHumansLooksHeartMayDifferentFeelingsBodyInspirationMovingSpeakSocialDifferencesHuman BeingsOrdinaryCapacityPrejudiceAidsToleranceTreatedOrdinary PeopleCrutchesWheelchairsBraces Author:James E. Faust
“Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk.” CountrySpeakDifficultLibertyTeachWonderfulSacrificeDemandTaxesOrdinaryTablesFolksLibertarianHungryContentmentLibertarianismAbyssDestinedRulingWonderful Times Author:Bertolt Brecht
“I sometimes hear preachers speak of the sad condition of men who live without God in the world, but a scientist who lives without God in the world seems to me worse off than ordinary men.” MenWorldLifeSometimesGodSeemsScienceSpeakConditionsOrdinaryScientistPreacherWithout GodOrdinary Man Author:Louis Agassiz
“The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.” WayProblemSpeakLanguageWishSeriousOrdinaryStructureAtoms Author:Werner Heisenberg