“The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret... but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know.”
“To most people, Hans Huberman was barely visible. An un-special person. Certainly his painting skills were excellent. His musical ability was better than average. Somehow, though . . . he was able to appear as merely part of the background. . . . Not noticeable. Not important or particularly valuable.”
“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”
“For though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world.”
″‘Hmm!’ said the Fairy Crustacea. ‘Wit, Charm, Courage, Health, Wisdom, Grace ... Good gracious, poor child! Well, thank goodness my magic is stronger than anyone else’s.’
She raised her twisty coral stick and waved it three times over the cradle of the seventh princess. ‘My child,’ said the Fairy Crustacea, ‘I am going to give you something that will probably bring you more happiness than all these fal-lals and fripperies put together. You shall be Ordinary!’
“I know this isn’t a conventional love story. I know there are all sorts of reasons I shouldn’t even be saying what I am. But I love you. I do. I knew it when I left Patrick. And I think you might even love me a little bit.”
“All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class--all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class--she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.”
“Ordinary people—and ordinary Germans—cannot be expected to tolerate activities which outrage the ordinary sense of ordinary decency unless the victims are, in advance, successfully stigmatized as enemies of the people, of the nation, the race, the religion. Or, if they are not enemies (that comes later), they must be an element within the community somehow extrinsic to the common bond, a decompositive ferment (be it only by the way they part their hair or tie their necktie) in the uniformity which is everywhere the condition of common quiet. The Germans’ innocuous acceptance and practice of social anti-Semitism before Hitlerism had undermined the resistance of their ordinary decency to the stigmatization and persecution to come.”
“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, *Principiis obsta* and *Finem respice*—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men?”
″‘I’ve heard of you. And if it hadn’t been for you, Godmama, I wouldn’t be here at this minute.’
‘Does that make you glad or sorry?’ asked the old lady.
‘Glad!’ said the Ordinary Princess promptly. ‘Though I ought to say,’ she added truthfully, ‘that there have been times when I’ve wished I was a really proper kind of princess ... but not very often.’
The old lady laughed a high cackling sort of laugh. ‘You’re a sensible child,’ she said. ‘Come and sit beside me and tell me all about it.‘”
“I would like to make fun plans with you, but then just do ordinary things; or plan ordinary things but find we have stepped through a wardrobe into a world of ordinary magic.”
“They prayed secretly, read the Bible through at least once a year, and went to hear the minister preach even when it snowed. Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven’t been.”
“By the time he went to school, Max was not a flying superhero, but just an ordinary boy with a cape and a mask...which were no help to him at all in the school yard.”
“At lunchtime in the school yard, to his friends he was still plain and ordinary, ‘Max’... Well, not quite ordinary. But then as Aaron said, ‘Everyone’s different in some way, aren’t they?’ ”
“From Franklin Hyde’s adventure,
lean to pass your Leisure Time
In Cleanly Merriment, and turn
From Mud and Ooze and Slime
And Every form of Nastiness-
But, on the other hand,
Children in ordinary Dress
May always play with Sand.”
“An All-American is an ordinary person with an extraordinary desire to excel. You don’t get to the top of the mountain by just dreaming. It’s nice to dream. But it’s the work ethic and pride that makes you get to that mountain top and that level of success.”
“People are rotten everywhere you go. They’re no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”
“He really could have been any other eighth-grade kid at Eastman Middle School. Except he had a daughter. And he wouldn’t look at you when he talked- if he talked.”
“Annemarie admitted to herself, snuggling there in the quiet dark, that she was glad to be an ordinary person who would never be called upon for courage.”
“The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.”