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Ordinary Quotes

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Ordinary Quotes

“One day posterity will remember these strange times, when ordinary common honesty was called courage.”

Remember Politics Common Honesty Strange One Day Ordinary Posterity Strange Times

Author:Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“Maeterlinck says that compared with ordinary truths mystic truths have strange privileges - they can neither age nor die. Beauty is eternal and ugliness, thank God, is ephemeral. Can there be any question as to which should attract the poet?”

Should Age Dies Strange Poet Eternal Ordinary Privilege Thank God Ugliness Mystic Ephemeral

Author:Florence Earle Coates

“Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely, eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms, and little wildflowers.”

Littles Made Literature Tree Strange Flower Ordinary Lovely Forests Grass Lakes Masterpiece Caves Patches Clinging Eloquent Vines Mushrooms Puddles Wildflowers

Author:Roberto Bolano

“There are certain events which to each man's life are as comets to the earth, seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from the ordinary lights which guide our course and mark our seasons, yet true to their own laws, potent in their own influences.”

Men Light Earth Law Certain Courses Destiny Influence Events Strange Ordinary Seasons Mark Guides Comets Erratic Portents

Author:Bill Vaughan

“It's unsettling, to lose the safety of the familiar, even when what's disrupted is an ordinary routine. When I began this poem, I was grieving for the loss of my old barbershop in Manhattan, and wondering at the strangeness of my new one. I didn't have any idea the poem would break into the underworld, opening a deeper subject: the continuing force of the old griefs routine helps to mediate, and my strange, sheer wonder at my own survival. Where's home now? In the contingent present, in which anything can disappear, and where we're sometimes granted some form of grace.”

“Americans have a strange notion that the ordinary laws of economics do not apply to them. So doubtless they will think they are prosperous if the boom starts, and that deficits and indebtedness are merely signs of how prosperous they are.”

Ifs Thinking Law Strange Ordinary Economics Notion Deficit Prosperous Indebtedness

Author:Albert J. Nock

“Almost in the same way as earlier physicists are said to have found suddenly that they had too little mathematical understanding to be able to master physics; we may say that young people today are suddenly in the position that ordinary common sense no longer suffices to meet the strange demands life makes. Everything has become so intricate that for its mastery an exceptional degree of understanding is required. For it is not enough any longer to be able to play the game well; but the question is again and again: what sort of game is to be played now anyway?”

“[William Eggleston] sets forth what makes up our ordinary world. What is there, however strange, can be accepted without question; familiarity will be what overwhelms us.”

World Strange Ordinary Accepted Familiarity Ordinary World

Book:Occasions: Selected Writings

Source: Occasions: Selected Writings

“I was never conscious of filming except for when I was location scouting. In a way, that is the most important part of the entire process - and the most private. I'm so used to doing that alone. Unlike every other part, it's just me, alone, on location.It's very hard to describe what I'm looking for - something that feels both familiar and strange at the same time. It's not enough for it just to be strange or mysterious, it also has to feel very ordinary, very familiar, and very nondescript.”

Way Feels Important Hard Enough Used Process Strange Ordinary Conscious Familiar Mysterious Location Me Alone Scouting

Author:Gregory Crewdson

“Few contemporary artists mined the space between the ordinary and the strange better than Orozco did.”

Artist Space Strange Ordinary Contemporary Space Between

Author:Jerry Saltz

“Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe. Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance. They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.”

“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.”

“Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word”

Knows Believe Made Said Seems Remember Fiction Strange Genius Hero Truth Is Ordinary Improvement Unexpected Etc Villain Splendid Glamorous Crooked Heroines Plausible Blake

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”

Source: Dracula

“If I could give you information of my life it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.”

Ifs Giving Has Beens Hard Done Shows Would Be Ability Path Information Strange Ordinary If I Could

Author:Florence Nightingale

“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.”

“It's strange how time can make a place shrink, make its strangeness ordinary.”

Strange Ordinary Shrinks Strangeness

Author:Veronica Roth

“Probably a dozen times since their death I've heard my mother or father, in an ordinary conversational tone of voice, call my name. They had called my name often during my life with them ... It doesn't seem strange to me.”

Seems Science Mother Religion Father Names Voice Heard Strange Ordinary Tone Dozen

Author:Carl Sagan