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Ordinary Quotes

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Ordinary Quotes

“We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.”

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience

“The beauty of modesty ... a virtue the world doesn't have much truck with: one ordinary flower in a vase, as opposed to a bouquet.”

World Virtue Flower Ordinary Modesty Truck Vases Bouquets

Book:Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“The movement of comets is part of the ordinary works of nature which, without regard to the happiness or misery of mankind, are transported from one part of the heavens to another by virtue of the general laws of motion.”

Law Heaven Virtue Atheism Mankind Movement Ordinary Regard Misery Positive Atheism Comets Laws Of Motion

Author:Pierre Bayle

“In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current crop of American poets necessarily give up on others.”

Source: Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry

“They that are virtuous from principle may receive confidence in every capacity; but they that are so from custom or habit, are capable of trust only in matters of ordinary and settled occurrence.”

May Matter Principles Virtue Habit Capable Ordinary Capacity Customs Virtuous

Author:Norm MacDonald

“In the ordinary course of things, how many succeed in society merely by virtue of their manners, while others, however meritorious, fail through lack of them? After all, it's only barbarians who wear uncut precious stones.”

Success Courses Virtue Failing Failure Succeed Ordinary Stones Manners Barbarians Success Failure Precious Stones

Author:Lord Chesterfield

“You have to have something vicious in you to be a creative writersomething old-adamish, incompatible to the "ordinary world.”

World Creative Virtue Ordinary Vicious Alienation Ordinary World

Author:D. H. Lawrence

“There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo.”

“What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?”

People Thinking Knows I Can Facts Body Care Faces Names Virtue Ordinary Curiosity Lips Target Ordinary People Fascination

Author:Alan Alda

“[My poems] of course, it's symbolic, in the way that things in a poem can be - that is, pointing to something beyond its mere ordinary meaning, while also retaining all the qualities of that ordinary meaning. In other words, it's a bear, but it's also suggesting something else, just by virtue of the attention to it. But it's not "symbolic" in that way we are taught to think about things in poems.”

Thinking Way Courses Attention Quality Virtue Taught Bears Ordinary Mere Pointing Symbolic Suggesting Retaining

Author:Matthew Zapruder

“Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries: common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.”

Life Humans Motivational Human Beings Common Virtue Century Ordinary Expectations Intelligent Perseverance Common Sense Rely Realistic Balanced Thrift Patience And Perseverance Realistic Expectations

Book:Common Sense on Mutual Funds

Source: Common Sense on Mutual Funds

“To be ordinary is the greatest virtue - because when you are just ordinary, nothing to claim, of this world or that, the ego disappears. The ego feeds on imbalance, the ego feeds on extremes. The ego lives on the polarities - in the middle it disappears. And in every area, in every direction of life, remember this: just stop in the middle and soon you will find the mind has stopped, the ego has stopped. Nothing to claim, it disappears. And when it disappears you have become virtuous. Now the door is open for the divine. In the middle you meet him; at the extremes you miss.”

World Mind Remember Virtue Doors Middle Missing This World Divine Ego Ordinary Areas Claims Extremes Disappear Virtuous Imbalance Polarity

Author:Rajneesh

“Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues, and careful in speaking about them, if, in his practice, he has anything defective, the superior man dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license.”

Ifs Men Character Practice Virtue Ordinary Careful Dare Superiors Excess Earnest License Defective Superior Man Confucianism

Book:Delphi Collected Works of Confucius - Four Books and Five Classics of Confucianism (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Collected Works of Confucius - Four Books and Five Classics of Confucianism (Illustrated)