Ordinary Quotes - Page 9

• ...and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that's really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.

  Bill Bryson

  People, Degrees, Mass

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• The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.

  Joseph Campbell

  Hero, Taken, Adventure

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• I believe Success is achieved by ordinary people with Extraordinary Determination.

  Zig Ziglar

  Determination, Believe, People

  Ziglar, Zig (1985). “Steps to the Top”, p.18, Pelican Publishing

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• The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. The dream of ordinary unconsciousness then turns into a nightmare.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Dream, Sleep, Challenges

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.74, New World Library

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• Be ordinary, but bring a quality of awareness to your ordinary life. Bring God to your ordinary life introduce God into your ordinary life. Sleep, eat, love, pray, meditate, but don’t think that you are making or doing something special—and then you will be special.

  Rajneesh

  Sleep, Thinking, Special

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• In ordinary life, a mentor can guide a young man through various disciplines, helping to bring him out of boyhood into manhood; and that in turn is associated not with body building, but with building and emotional body capable of containing more than one sort of ecstasy.

  Robert Bly

  Men, Emotional, Discipline

  "Iron John: A Book About Men". Book by Robert Bly, 1990.

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• The kids kept walking, moving through the Henley's halls like a tide, but when Kat turned to leave, she walked in the opposite directions. She wasn't an ordinary kid, after all. Katarina Bishop followed no one.

  Ally Carter

  Moving, Kids, Opposites

  Ally Carter (2011). “Heist Society”, p.128, Hachette UK

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• Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!

  Agatha Christie

  Tea, Everyday, Afternoon

  Agatha Christie (1977). “Masterpieces of murder”, Dodd Mead

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• Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences -- good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as "ordinary courage.

  Brené Brown

  Latin, Commitment, Heart

  "I thought it was just me". Book by Brené Brown, February 2007.

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• Don't make it sound like that. Like some ordinary sort of grief. It's not like that. They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite. Over. This is a fresh wound every day.

  Cassandra Clare

  Grief, Sound, Time Heals

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.601, Simon and Schuster

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• I've seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives.

  Tracy Chapman

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

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• Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother
  to learn more than the simplest facts of flight how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this
  gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else,
  Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

  Richard Bach

  Inspirational, Bird, Flying

  RICHARD BACH (1970). “JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL”

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• Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long lasting structures? Aren't the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony? ... Besides, there is an attraction, a special charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of art do not apply.

  Gustave Eiffel

  Beautiful, Art, Science

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• To be successful you don't need to do extraordinary things, you just need to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.

  Jim Rohn

  Change, Happiness, Inspiring

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• The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Political, Experience, Politics

  Thomas Jefferson (1861). “Correspondence”, p.252

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• I think that it is useless to fight directly against natural weaknesses. One has to force oneself to act as though one did not have them in circumstances where a duty makes it imperative; and in the ordinary course of life one has to know these weaknesses, prudently take them into account, and strive to turn them to good purpose; for they are all capable of being put to some good purpose.

  Simone Weil

  Happiness, Fighting, Thinking

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.5, Routledge

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• False happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.

  Alexander Pope

  Happiness, Time, Money

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• Consultant: an ordinary guy more than 50 miles from home.

  Eric Sevareid

  Home, Knowledge, Guy

  Eric Sevareid (1964). “This is Eric Sevareid”

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• Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Faith, Confidence, Soulmate

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• A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting... Thus a man of knowledge sweats and puffs and if one looks at him he is just like an ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under his control.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Knowledge, Men, Thinking

  "Separate Reality: Conversations With Don Juan". Book by Carlos Castaneda, p. 85, 1971.

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• We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.

  William James

  Life, Heart, People

  "Essays on Faith and Morals".

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• People sometimes forget that jazz was built not only in the minds of the great ones but on the backs of the ordinary ones — ordinary musicians.

  Cab Calloway

  Music, Mind, Jazz

  "Of Minnie the Moocher and Me".

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• There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented ... The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.

  Ernest Bevin

  Peace, War, Thinking

  Hansard 23 Nov. 1945, col. 786

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• Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

  Paul Engle

  Ideas, Reading Poetry, Skins

  New York Times, February 17, 1957.

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• Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider's delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Communication, Writing, Voice

  Joyce Carol Oates (1989). “(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities”, Plume

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