Ordinary Quotes - Page 27

• It takes no effort to be ordinary. Ordinary is not even a challenge. You can do nothing and be ordinary.

  Bernard Hopkins

  Effort, Challenges, Can Do

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• Nor was I the only one struggling.To live an ordinary life, like any ordinary person, must have been the vain dream of countless others.

  Sayo Masuda

  Dream, Struggle, Vain

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• When we trust our creativity we encounter a supreme kind of enjoyment - an amazement at the natural unfolding of life beyond our ordinary way of looking at things.

  Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

  Creativity, Encounters, Way

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• Nothing extraordinary is achieved through ordinary means.

  Scott Belsky

  Mean, Extraordinary

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• We have the idea that God is going to do some exceptional thing- that He is preparing and equipping us for some extraordinary work in the future. But as we grow in His grace we find that God is glorifying Himself here and now, at this very moment. If we have God’s assurance behind us, the most amazing strength becomes ours, and we learn to sing, glorifying Him even in the ordinary days and ways of life.

  Oswald Chambers

  Ordinary Days, Ideas, Grace

  Oswald Chambers (2013). “Utmost: Classic Readings and Prayers from Oswald Chambers”, p.49, Discovery House

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• The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.

  Graham Swift

  Art, Clever, Real

  "Triumph of the common man" by John O'Mahony, www.theguardian.com. March 1, 2003.

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• What people sometimes interpret as quirky is my attempt to subvert the concept of luxury by introducing elements that are considered ordinary or commonplace.

  Miuccia Prada

  Luxury, People, Quirky

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity. It manifests as inquisitiveness , as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness. It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure who we are, or who anyone else is, either.

  Pema Chodron

  Wisdom, Buddhist, Humor

  Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.26, Shambhala Publications

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• When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots. They can't get away with their abuse. They can't get away with subjection. They can't get away with subjugation. They can't get away with exploitation. They can't get away with domination. It takes courage for folk to stand up.

  Cornel West

  People, Abuse, Wake Up

  FaceBook post by Dr. Cornel West from Jan 04, 2017

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• In ordinary life, we are not aware of the unity of all things, but divide the world into separate objects and events. This division is useful and necessary to cope with our everyday environment, but it is not a fundamental feature of reality. It is an abstraction devised by our discriminating and categorising intellect. To believe that our abstract concepts of separate 'things' and 'events' are realities of nature is an illusion.

  Fritjof Capra

  Believe, Reality, Unity

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• The ordinary method of education is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Children, Views, Ideas

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2007). “Studies in Pessimism”, p.56, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Love is a romantic designation for a most ordinary biological process-or, shall we say, chemical-process ... a lot of nonsense is talked and written about it.

  Greta Garbo

  Love Is, Chemistry, Nonsense

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• A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Intellectual, Groups

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.69, Knopf

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• Now, when ordinary people attempt to find happiness, I am not sure whether the happiness is really happiness or not. I study what ordinary people do to find happiness, what they struggle for, rushing about apparently unable to stop.

  Zhuangzi

  Happiness, Struggle, Rushing

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• We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with.... Oh that God would make us dangerous!

  Jim Elliot

  Christian, Prayer, Religion

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• What changed these very ordinary men (who were such cowards that they did not dare stand too near the cross in case they got involved) into heroes who would stop at nothing? A swindle? Hallucination? Spooky nonsense in a darkened room? Or Somebody quietly doing what He said He'd do - walk right through death? What do you think?

  John Bertram Phillips

  Christian, Prayer, Hero

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• He, who for an ordinary cause, resigns the fate of his patient to mercury, is a vile enemy to the sick; and, if he is tolerably popular, will, in one successful season, have paved the way for the business of life, for he has enough to do, ever afterward, to stop the mercurial breach of the constitutions of his dilapidated patients. He has thrown himself in fearful proximity to death, and has now to fight him at arm's length as long as the patient maintains a miserable existence.

  Nathaniel Chapman

  Fighting, Fate, Successful

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• When chess masters err, ordinary wood pushers tend to derive a measure of satisfaction, if not actual glee.

  Israel Albert Horowitz

  Mistake, Glee, Chess

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• An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do.

  Russell Hoban

  Dark, Night, Reflection

  Russell Hoban (2002). “The Medusa Frequency”, p.80, A&C Black

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• The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

  Edmund Burke

  Stars, Lying, Views

  Edmund Burke (1871). “The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke”, p.154

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• There are reasons, increasing in number and quality, to believe that the masses of ordinary galaxies may have been underestimated by a factor of 10 or more.

  Jeremiah P. Ostriker

  Believe, Numbers, Quality

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• From the moment they had left the Earth, their own weight, and that of the Projectile and the objects therein contained, had been undergoing a progressive diminution. . . . Of course, it is quite clear, that this decrease could not be indicated by an ordinary scales, as the weight to balance the object would have lost precisely as much as the object itself. But a spring balance, for instance, in which the tension of the coil is independent of attraction, would have readily given the exact equivalent of the loss.

  Jules Verne

  Spring, Future, Independent

  Jules Verne (2014). “All Around The Moon”, p.111, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The ancient Masters didn't try to educate the people, but kindly taught them to not-know. When they think that they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, people can find their own way. If you want to learn how to govern, avoid being clever or rich. The simplest pattern is the clearest. Content with an ordinary life, you can show all people the way back to their own true nature.

  Laozi

  Clever, Thinking, People

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• The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things. All things have their backs to the female and stand facing the male. When male and female combine, all things achieve harmony. Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.

  Laozi

  Hate, Men, Two

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• Because it equates tradition with prejudice, the left finds itself increasingly unable to converse with ordinary people in their common language.

  Christopher Lasch

  People, Prejudice, Common

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