Ordinary Quotes - Page 40

• The genius of the American system is that we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.

  Phil Gramm

  America, People, Genius

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• Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished bride of quietness, then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

  Terry Eagleton

  Book, Bus Stops, Everyday

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.2, John Wiley & Sons

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• I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it.

  Graham Swift

  Thinking, Extraordinary

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• No one is ever ordinary.

  Tanith Lee

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• To many women marriage is only this. It is merely a physical change impinging on their ordinary nature, leaving their mentality untouched, their self-possession intact. They are not burnt by even the red fire of physical passion - far less by the white fire of love.

  Mary Webb

  Marriage, Passion, Fire

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• I just want to go to university and have fun - I want to be an ordinary student. I'm only going to university. It's not like I'm getting married - though that's what it feels like sometimes.

  Prince William

  Fun, Want, Students

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• I don't know how other people perceive the lives of actors, but my life is fairly ordinary. I go to work, I come home, I put my kids to bed. If I'm home in time for dinner, I have dinner, and then it's bedtime.

  Steve Carell

  Home, Kids, People

  Interview with Carole Cadwalladr, www.theguardian.com. August 21, 2010.

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• I don't see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.

  Eve Arnold

  People, Lenses, Fronts

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• The vital thing for me is to integrate the history from above with the history from below because only in that way can you show the true consequences of the decisions of Hitler or Stalin or whomever on the ordinary civilians caught up in the battle.

  Antony Beevor

  Decision, Battle, Way

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• I like being able to go to the supermarket and go on the Tube and have an ordinary domestic life. I'd hate to have to protect myself. I'm quite lucky that I can carry on without any intrusions. I don't get given a hard time by anyone.

  Jim Broadbent

  Hate, Hard Times, Lucky

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• We're all pretty ordinary on paper.

  Michael Bergin

  Paper

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• But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.

  Russell Banks

  Art, Reading, Writing

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• When you start a company, it's more an art than a science because it's totally unknown. Instead of solving high-profile problems, try to solve something that's deeply personal to you. Ideally, if you're an ordinary person and you've just solved your problem, you might have solved the problem for millions of people.

  Brian Chesky

  Art, People, Trying

  "INSTANT MBA: If You've Just Solved A Problem, You May Have Solved It For Millions" by Patricia Laya, www.businessinsider.com. August 4, 2011.

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• I would have preferred to be successful here with a piece that cost me a huge amount of money and effort... rather than sending to Bohemia some ordinary works.

  Camille Claudel

  Successful, Effort, Cost

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• Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  People, Ordinary People, Activism

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• I started using contact microphones that you can place on common, ordinary objects, like a rake. I put a microphone on it and it picked up the tines vibrating and turned it into a horrible din. What attracted me to it was the horrible din - that's what I really liked.

  Eugene Chadbourne

  Rakes, Common, Microphones

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• The ultimate first date? Something that is completely out of the ordinary - go crazy, because first dates are always a little awkward, so do something a little extreme.

  Gina Carano

  Crazy, Awkward, Littles

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• It's fair to say that, for much of my lifetime, New Zealand certainly was a property-owning democracy and working people, ordinary people, had assets.

  Helen Clark

  People, Democracy, Lifetime

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• You could say Shakespeare is so extraordinary precisely because he was so ordinary. He had all the usual anxieties and understandings of what it is to have children, lose children, get married, struggle to make a living and so on.

  Simon Callow

  Children, Struggle, Anxiety

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• I think a 23-page ordinary comic is an investment for the artist, but if you're doing something 60 to 104 pages, that's a really big investment for an artist. So unless you've got someone who wants to pay you while you're doing it or up front, it's kind hard to get someone to do that with you, unless you're the artist yourself.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Artist, Thinking, Want

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• You would be amazed what the ordinary guy knows.

  Matt Drudge

  Guy, Would Be, Amazed

  Speech to the National Press Club on Media and the Internet, delivered 2 June 1998

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• My stories are not Christianized at all. I don't even have any Christians in my stories. What they are, are stories about ordinary people going through extraordinary circumstances in which I'm exploring truth. How light overcomes darkness in a way that's unmistakable to anyone who has any kind of faith.

  Ted Dekker

  Christian, Light, People

  "Best-selling author shaped by cannibals, Christianity" by Eric Marrapodi, www.cnn.com. April 28, 2009.

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• I wrote poetry, journals, and, especially, plays for the neighborhood kids to perform. I had an ordinary, happy childhood. Nothing much was going on, but I had fun.

  Alex Flinn

  Fun, Kids, Play

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• I think it's time we had a president who carried the same life experiences into the White House as most ordinary Americans.

  Dick Gephardt

  Thinking, White, House

  Twitter post from Oct 10, 2016

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• I love to take something ordinary and make it really special.

  Ina Garten

  Special

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