Ordinary Quotes - Page 38

• Consciously cultivate the ordinary.

  Walker Percy

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• I know it's not ordinary. But who ever loved ordinary?

  Joan Clarke

  Imitation, Knows

  "Fictional character: Joan Clarke". "The Imitation Game", www.imdb.com. August 29, 2014.

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• The miracle of Bach has not appeared in any other art. To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervour, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time.

  Pablo Casals

  Spiritual, Art, Wings

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• When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Morning, Lovely, Want

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• The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

  Walter Lippmann

  Art, Patriotic, Thinking

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.122, Harvard University Press

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• Tis the taste of effeminacy that disrelishes ordinary and accustomed things.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Taste, Mundane, Accustomed

  Michel de Montaigne (1877). “The Essays of Montaigne”, p.425

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• Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace. Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place. The pleasures of an ordinary life.

  Judith Viorst

  Children, Hair, Dancing

  Judith Viorst (1990). “Forever Fifty and Other Negotiations”, Thorndike Pr

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• I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Grieving, Space

  Mark Twain (1871). “The Innocents Abroad, Or, The New Pilgrims' Progress: Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land : with Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures, as They Appeared to the Author”, p.239

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• No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Men, Criticism

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• On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Democracies Have, Democracy, Dignity

  Sinclair Lewis (2014). “It Can't Happen Here”, p.30, Penguin

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• Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Communication, People, Perfect

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• One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Weakness, Principles, Logic

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.34

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• It will be said that the joy of mental adventure must be rare, that there are few who can appreciate it, and that ordinary education can take no account of so aristocratic a good. I do not believe this. The joy of mental adventure is far commoner in the young than in grown men and women. ...It is rare in later life because everything is done to kill it during education.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Believe, Adventure

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.95, Lulu Press, Inc

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• To be old is to be part of a huge and ordinary multitude... the reason why old age was venerated in the past was because it was extraordinary.

  Ronald Blythe

  Past, Age, Reason Why

  Ronald Blythe (1979). “The View in Winter: Reflections on Old Age”, p.17, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.

  Neil Kinnock

  Fall, Young, Ill

  On the prospect of a Conservative re-election, in speech at Bridgend, 7 June 1983; 'Guardian' 8 June 1983

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• And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Tree, Age, Phrases

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• It requires a serious mind and a determined heart to pray past the ordinary into the unusual.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Heart, Past, Mind

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• Ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

  Patricia Stephens Due

  People, Can Do, Ordinary People

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• The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit; the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Men, Lust, Flesh

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• That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in. and the best of me is diligence.

  William Shakespeare

  Persistence, Men, Fit

  William Shakespeare (2001). “King Lear”, p.63, Classic Books Company

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• If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class.

  George Orwell

  Character, Class, Three

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If clearness about things produces a fundamental despair, a fundamental despair in turn produces a remarkable clearness or even playfulness about ordinary matters.

  George Santayana

  Despair, Fundamentals, Matter

  George Santayana (1944). “Persons and Places”

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• At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Eye, People, Secret

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2015). “Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography”, p.815, e-artnow

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• My family is out of the ordinary in our physical lifestyle and the day-to-day things that we deal with, but my approach to them is pretty rational and sound. And I'm the quiet one! It's very different from my performing life.

  Dee Snider

  Sound, Different, Quiet

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

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• Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

  Joseph Conrad

  Teacher, Reality, Men

  Joseph Conrad (2016). “Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels [Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, etc.] (Book House)”, p.1433, Book House

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