ordinary Quotes

“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.”

“Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become 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.”

“Here’s what I think: the only reason I’m not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way.”

“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?”

“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.”

“I’m sure I was a huge disappointment. I’m not pretty or smart or athletic. I’m just like them - an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies.”

“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.”

“Sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people.”

″... he was ordinary in a world that loved the extraordinary.”

“Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”

“You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.”

“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary.”

“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.”

″‘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!’

“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.”

″‘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.‘”

“In short, comics lacks the precision it ought to have for ordinary communication let alone serious philosophical deliberations.”

“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?’ ”

“The Earl of Norm (ho hum) is completely ordinary, but he adores the Duchess.”

“On that day if you happen to see an elephant ordinary elephant colour, you will know it must be Elmer.”

“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.”

“He’s a very ordinary-looking, not ugly but not hot, miscellaneous boy.”

“Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Ordinary Jack, that’s me. It’s what they should’ve christened me- Ordinary Jack Matthew Bagthorpe- with an e.”

″‘They don’t look like geniuses,’ Jack thought, not for the first time. ‘Just like anybody else’s brother and sisters they look.‘”

“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.”

“I was confused and heart-wrenchingly sad to the point of numbness. I just couldn’t understand what I had to do to be seen as an ordinary person.”

“Once there was a peddler who sold caps. But he was not like an ordinary peddler carrying his wares on his back. He carried them on top of his head.”

“It was an ordinary house, he thought, an ugly house, nothing to boast of. But the idea that it was his, the idea of family history pleased him.”

“Can you believe there was a time when no one in the world knew about it? A time when he was just an ordinary boy called Nikolas, living in the middle of nowhere, or the middle of Finland, doing nothing with magic except believing in it?”

“And suddenly the children noticed that its little red wings had gone from the legs! It looked just an ordinary chair now!”

“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.”

“In his article all men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken?”