Ordinary Quotes - Page 7

• The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time.

  Rachel Joyce

  Feet, Long, People

  Rachel Joyce (2012). “The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry”, p.150, Random House

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• With the death of my father, it wasn't just the objects of everyday life that had changed; even the most ordinary street scenes had become irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Father, Everyday, Details

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “The Museum of Innocence”, p.312, Faber & Faber

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• I'm one of those people who was meant to have a very ordinary life. I have no special talent, no great beauty, nothing that distinguishes me from a hundred, thousand other girls. But I can't go through an entire lifetime without at least one night of magic.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Girl, Night, People

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• Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.

  Haruki Murakami

  People, Imperfect

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• Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.

  Haruki Murakami

  War, Thinking, Japan

  "Kafka On The Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami, www.newyorker.com. 2002.

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• I couldn't remember ordinary moments, only the ones that had made an impression. Ordinary moments were the ones that fell away first.

  David Levithan

  Firsts, Remember, Moments

  David Levithan (2011). “Every You, Every Me”, p.86, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• He was the most ordinary man in all the world, and yet in her memory he'd become luminous, like the prince in a fairy tale.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Memories, Men, World

  Cheryl Strayed (2014). “Torch”, p.161, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what violence is.

  William T. Vollmann

  Lessons, Patterns, Weapons

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• I've never been in love, but I've always imagined it--weirdly--like some sort of OxiClean commercial. The TV host shows a scene from an ordinary day, and then takes a big old sponge soaked in love and swipes away the stains. Suddenly that same scene is missing all the mistakes, all the loneliness. The colors are like jewels, ten times richer than they were before. The music is louder and clearer. "Love," the host will say, "makes life a little brighter.

  Jodi Picoult

  Mistake, Loneliness, Ordinary Days

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• One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.

  C. S. Lewis

  Eye, People, Facts

  C. S. Lewis (2010). “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, p.21, HarperCollins UK

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• I never, ever took you for granted. We met too late for that; I was nearly thirty-three by then, and my past without you was too stark and insistent for me to find the miracle of companionship ordinary.

  Lionel Shriver

  Past, Miracle, Three

  Lionel Shriver (2011). “We Need to Talk about Kevin”, p.21, Counterpoint Press

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• By choosing to live above the ordinary level we create extraordinary problems for ourselves.

  Henry Miller

  Levels, Problem, Choosing To Live

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• The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Night, Ideas

  "Cosmos". Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

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• The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

  Alain de Botton

  Love, Two, People

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• The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far.

  Paulo Coelho

  Giving Up, Order, Soul

  Paulo Coelho (1998). “The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition”, HarperSanFrancisco

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• Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.

  Anne Frank

  Book, Reading, Mean

  Anne Frank, General Press (2016). “The Diary of a Young Girl”, p.63, GENERAL PRESS

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• For me, Savannah's resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.

  John Berendt

  Cities, People, Personality

  John Berendt (2010). “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, p.454, Vintage

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• Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me. I escape, one way or another. No more walls.

  Anais Nin

  Life, Wall, Freedom

  "The Resurgence And Allure Of Anais Nin" by Diana M. Raab, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 12, 2016.

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• If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!

  Idries Shah

  Wise, Men, Thinking

  Idries Shah (1983). “Reflections”, p.28, Octagon Press Ltd

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• Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Time, Men, Thinking

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.88, Publishdrive

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• Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.

  Frances Hardinge

  Kings, People, Rose

  Frances Hardinge (2011). “Fly By Night”, p.315, Pan Macmillan

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• If she were here I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off her. I would hold her so close she'd beg me to let her breathe. I'd kiss her so hard she'd plead for mercy. I'd unfasten her clothing and lie with her onthat hard bed, and what was between us would be as far above the ordinary congress between man and woman as the stars are above their pale reflections in the lake below.

  Juliet Marillier

  Stars, Lying, Kissing

  Juliet Marillier (2011). “Heir to Sevenwaters”, p.343, Pan Macmillan

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• [...] allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put[...] There is no royal road to perfection.

  Frederick Douglass

  Heart, Opportunity, Perfection

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• That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.

  Ted Hughes

  Children, People, Walking Dead

  Ted Hughes, Christopher Reid (2008). “Letters of Ted Hughes”, Farrar Straus & Giroux

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• There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie’s opinion. Ordinary was for suckers.

  Libba Bray

  Opinion, Sucker

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