A Life Less Ordinary Quotes

Everyone wanted a life less ordinary. And only a tiny minority ever got it, and even they probably didn't appreciate it much. ~ Mick Herron

No point in living a life less ordinary if you don't know what the other side looks like. ~ Adi Alsaid

Live a life less ordinary. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

It's easy to like the most popular films, but I have a great fondness for 'A Life Less Ordinary'. ~ Danny Boyle

I do sometimes miss living on the edge. The view from there takes your breath away. ~ Amy Molloy

She read about amazing people she could never be, met friends she would never see, go on incredible adventures she would never have, in mystical places that didn't exist. Slipping inside the minds of others, feeling their every heartbeat, their passion and sorrow. Spending a life hopping between the pages, living a life less ordinary. Getting the life she had always dreamed of had never been so easy. ~ Raven Lockwood

Life is not a race - but indeed a journey. Be honest. Work hard. Be choosy. Say "thank you", "I love you", and "great job" to someone each day. Go to church, take time for prayer. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh. Let your handshake mean more than pen and paper. Love your life and what you've been given, it is not accidental ~ search for your purpose and do it as best you can. Dreaming does matter. It allows you to become that which you aspire to be. Laugh Often. Appreciate the little things in life and enjoy them. Some of the best things really are free. Do not worry, less wrinkles are more becoming. Forgive, it frees the soul. Take time for yourself ~ plan for longevity. Recognize the special people you've been blessed to know. Live for today, enjoy the moment. ~ Bonnie Mohr

It is no less impossible for us not to taste as bitter the death of those whose life for us was such a source of sweetness. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

I wanted a settled life and a shocking one. Think of Van Gogh, cypress trees and church spires under a sky of writhing snakes. I was my father's daughter. I wanted to be loved by someone like my tough judicious mother and I wanted to run screaming through the headlights with a bottle in my hand. That was the family curse. We tended to nurse flocks of undisciplined wishes that collided and canceled each other out. The curse implied that if we didn't learn to train our desires in one direction or another we were likely to end up with nothing. Look at my father and mother today.

I married in my early twenties. When that went to pieces I loved a woman. At both of those times and at other times, too, I believed I had focused my impulses and embarked on a long victory over my own confusion. Now, in my late thirties, I knew less than ever about what I wanted. In place of youth's belief in change I had begun to feel a nervous embarrassment that ticked inside me like a clock. I'd never meant to get this far in such an unfastened condition. (p.142) ~ Michael Cunningham

Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type. When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city - Birmingham, Alabama - five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism. When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which many people will ~ Stokely Carmichael

Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can't make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning
much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes business sense. ~ Peter Koestenbaum

The more intelligent and competent a woman is in her adult life, the less likely she is to have received an adequate amount of romantic attention in adolescence. ~ Susan Jacoby

It's less a matter of looking the other way than of closing our eyes to what we can't stop from happening. ~ Arthur Golden

Our show is less about a girl who is doing miracles and more about the domino effect of this girl's life, and how everyone else is affected. Our show seems to be a questioning show as opposed to an action sort of fairy tale. ~ Amber Tamblyn

But Saeed's father was thinking also of the future, even though he did not say this to Saeed, for he feared that if he said this to his son that his son might not go, and he knew above all else that his son must go, and what he did not say was that he had come to that point in a parent's life when, if a flood arrives, one knows one must let go of one's child, contrary to all the instincts one had when one was younger, because holding on can no longer offer the child protection, it can only pull the child down, and threaten them with drowning, for the child is now stronger than the parent, and the circumstances are such that the utmost of strength is required, and the arc of a child's life only appears for a while to match the arc of a parent's, in reality one sits atop the other, a hill atop a hill, a curve atop a curve, and Saeed's father's arc now needed to curve lower, while his son's still curved higher, for with an old man hampering them these two young people were simply less likely to survive. ~ Mohsin Hamid

This too shall pass." It confirms that you can and should expect change and Uncertainty as a natural part of your life experience because nothing (and no thing) lasts forever. The sooner you learn this life lesson, the less you shall suffer. ~ Dennis Merritt Jones

I've dreamed of you so much you're losing your reality.
Is there still time to reach that living body and kiss
onto that mouth the birth of the voice so dear to me?
I've dreamed of you so much that my arms, accustomed
to being crossed on my breast while hugging your shadow
would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
And, faced with the real appearance of what has haunted
and ruled me for days and years, I would probably
become a shadow.
o sentimental balances.
I've dreamed of you so much it's no longer right
for me to awaken. I sleep standing up, my body exposed
to all signs of life and love, and you
the only one who matters to me now, I'd be less able
to touch your face and your lips than the face and the lips
of the first woman who came along. I've dreamed of you so much, walked so much, spoken
and lain with your phantom that perhaps nothing more is left me
than to be a phantom among phantoms and a hundred times more shadow
than the shadow that walks and will joyfully walk
on the sundial of your life. ~ Robert Desnos

I've never met a real live fan before. I didn't think about it until now, and it's a strange thing. All these people who love Monstrous Sea - they're numbers on a screen. Comments, views, likes. The bigger the numbers get, the less like people they seem. It's easy to forget they're humans like Wallace. Like me. Finding someone who likes it - who loves it - enough to make their own art about it and actually hand it to me themselves, instead of sending it to a P.O. box or emailing it, is surreal to the highest degree.

But he doesn't know I'm me. He doesn't know he handed his fanfiction to LadyConstellation. That is definitely wrong. It feels wrong. But it's not like I'm going to use it to hurt him. And what was I supposed to do? Maybe if he knew who I was, he'd have shoved it at me and forced me to read it. I've never met fans in real life, I don't know what they'll do if they meet me.

I know, if I had ever met Olivia Kane, author of Children of Hypnos, I would have probably burst into tears and collapsed on the floor at her feet. I doubt Wallace will do that, but I don't want to take the risk. ~ Francesca Zappia

I draw myself up next to her and look at her profile, making no effort to disguise my attention, here, where there is only Puck to see me. The evening sun loves her throat and her cheekbones. Her hair the color of cliff grass rises and falls over her face in the breeze. Her expression is less ferocious than usual, less guarded.

I say, "Are you afraid?"

Her eyes are far away on the horizon line, out to the west where the sun has gone but the glow remains. Somewhere out there are my capaill uisce, George Holly's America, every gallon of water that every ship rides on.

Puck doesn't look away from the orange glow at the end of the world. "Tell me what it's like. The race."

What it's like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It's the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It's speed, if you're lucky. It's life and it's death or it's both and there's nothing like it. Once upon a time, this moment - this last light of evening the day before the race - was the best moment of the year for me. The anticipation of the game to come. But that was when all I had to lose was my life.

"There's no one braver than you on that beach."

Her voice is dismissive. "That doesn't matter."

"It does. I meant what I said at the festival. This island cares no ~ Maggie Stiefvater

It wasn't really touching to be young; it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty; and heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went home to bed. ~ Rose Macaulay

Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers. God isn't offended by your biggest dreams or boldest prayers. He is offended by anything less. If your prayers aren't impossible to you, they are insulting to God.

Prayers are prophecies. They are the best predictors of your spiritual future. Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.

The greatest tragedy in life is the prayers that go unanswered because they go unasked.

God does not answer vague prayers. The more specific your prayers are, the more glory God receives.

Most of us don't get what we want because we quit praying. We give up too easily. We give up too soon. We quit praying right before the miracle happens.

If you don't take the risk, you forfeit the miracle.

Take a step of faith when God gives you a vision because you trust that the One who gave you the vision is going to make provision. And for the record, if the vision is from God, it will most definitely be beyond your means.

We shouldn't seek answers as much as we should seek God. If you seek answers you won't find them, but if you seek God, the answers will find you.

If your plans aren't birthed in prayer and bathed in prayer, they won't succeed.

Are your problems bigger than God, or is God bigger than your problems? Our biggest problem is our small view of God. That is the cause o ~ Mark Batterson

You don't know what the story is about when you're in the middle of it. All you can do is keep walking. At the beginning, you have buoyancy and a little arrogance. The journey looks beautiful and bright, and you are filled with resolve and silver strength, sure that you will face it with optimism and chutzpah. And the end is beautiful. You are wiser, better, deeper. The end is revelation, resolution, a soft place to land. But, oh, the middle. The middle is fog, exhaustion, loneliness, the daily battle against despair and the nagging fear that tomorrow will be just like today, only you'll be wearier and less able to defend yourself against it. All you can ask for, in the middle, are sweet moments of reprieve in the company of people you love. For a few hours, you'll feel protected by the goodness of friendship and life around the table, and that's the best thing I can imagine. ~ Shauna Niequist

You don't get used to death, by any means, but it becomes more familiar and less shocking. Suicide is something completely different. Losing someone to age is natural. Illness you can get angry at. You can rage at the conditions that cause an accident, and in war you can hate the enemy for taking a life. But when it comes to suicide, only the person who committed it is responsible. Who in their right mind would put the blame on them? Maybe that's why those left behind end up blaming themselves instead. ~ Jay Bell

To be honest, we have no control over what's going on with a movie, much less what people are going to think of it. Your whole life is wound up in it but you don't have control and you have to get used to being on that turbulent plane without trying to fly it. The less you think about all that the better. ~ Mike Mills

I'd be alone the rest of my life before I'd settle for less than a man that flat out adored me. ~ R.K. Lilley

I longed for nothing more than to behold a stormy sea, less as a mighty spectacle than as a momentary revelation of the true life of nature; ~ Marcel Proust

Weirdly, D&D didn't encourage my leanings towards trying magic of my own at all. In fact, it frustrated them. Even the most pompous and ambitious historical magicians, from the Zaroastrian Magi through John Dee, Francis Barrett and Aleister Crowley, never claimed to be able to throw fireballs or lightning bolts like D&D wizards can. So D&D was never going to feed the fantasies of practising magic in the real world. That is all about gaining secret knowledge, a higher level of perception or inflicting misfortune or a boon on someone rather than causing a poisonous cloud of vapor to pour from your fingers (Cloudkill, deadly to creatures with less than 5 hit dice, for those who are interested). The game, as we played it, just doesn't support the occult idea of magic.

In fact, it might even be argued that, by giving such a powerful prop to my imagination, D&D stopped me from going deeper into the occult in real life. I certainly had all the qualifications - bullied power-hungry twerp with no discernable skill in conventional fields and no immediate hope of a girlfriend who wasn't mentally ill. It's amazing I'm not out sacrificing goats to this day. ~ Mark Barrowcliffe

I realized that every second that I'm alive, the world cares less about me. It's just a very linear, downward progression. And it sounds cynical because you guys are young and you're full with life. I want you to understand - this is it. You have nothing to look forward to because you're peaking. If you're not having fun now, kill yourself. I don't mean that in a bad way, just - it's not worth it to go forward. ~ Greg Fitzsimmons

Life,
perhaps less a document than an impression,
conveyed through partial glances,
stream-of-consciousness juxtapositions,
unpredictable rhythms,
a collage of sound,
a conscientious diarist,
a career of blackmail and scandal culminated in murder,
a blind man with a will of iron and a nervous system of gossamer. ~ Brian D'Ambrosio

It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: they look better from a distance. ~ Remy De Gourmont

Take the path less traveled and learn from your mistakes. Don't just let life happen around you; control your future. Learn to ask questions, set small goals, and dream of big ones. Absorb any criticism and let it fuel you. Convince others that you are worthy of your dream, and show them that you are willing to put up a damn good fight for it. ~ Matthew T. Cross

As the wind swelled, my tree started to sway. Almost like a human body it swung back and around, gently at first, then more and more wildly. While the swaying intensified, so did my fears that the trunk might snap and hurl me to the ground. But in time my confidence returned. Amazed at how the tree could be at once so flexible and so sturdy, I held on tight as it bent and waved, twisted and swirled, slicing curves and arcs through the air. With each graceful swing, I felt less a creature of the land and more a part of the wind itself.
"The rain began falling, it's sound merging with the splashing river and the singing trees. Branches streamed like waterfalls of green. Tiny rivers cascaded down every trunk, twisting through moss meadows and bark canyons. All the while, I rode out the gale. I could not have felt wetter. I could not have felt freer.
"When, at last, the storm subsided, the entire world seemed newly born. Sunbeams danced on rain-washed leaves. Curling columns of mist rose from every glade. The forest's colors shown more vivid, its smells struck more fresh. And I understood, for the first time in my life, that the Earth was always being remade, that life was always being renewed. That it may have been the afternoon of this particular day, but it was still the very morning of Creation. ~ T.A. Barron

Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one
that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life. ~ Alain De Botton

Beware of those who speak ill of others in your presence; don't be surprised of what they say about you in your absence. ~ A.J. Garces

Subject becoming less relevant, each painting having a life of its own, each stroke leading to the next. It is more about the connection of body and spirit to canvas, over mind to canvas. ~ Ken Gillespie

Encouragement is important for in our daily walk we all will encounter some degree of adversity. At times due to fear we give the weight of our difficulty so much authority that we allow it to dictate life decisions. As a result we lie defeated, so scared of the struggle that we might incur on ourselves that we willingly embrace a life less than; a life of mediocrity. The word of God never said that we would be trouble free but that we would be troubled on every side yet not distressed; that we would be perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. ~ Ahlumba Harris

Little is known about the love lives of the undead. Really, past the brain-eating, reanimated corpse angle, not much is said for the zombie's perspective. So they ate brains - big deal! Sure, they were corpses - so what? Indeed, there was the smell, but whose fault was that?
At first glance they were brain-hungry cannibals, (Mmm, brains. Maybe with a little cilantro or a garlic rub - mashed potatoes and brainsloaf - brains pot pie - penne a la brains...) but in reality, zombies were not the mindless man-eaters or virus-addled lunatics jonesing for human flesh depicted in the movies. Just like everything in life - or rather, unlife - things were more complicated. Zombies were, until very recently, people. And with that came wants, desires, longings. Needs.
Asher had been troubled by the zombie loneliness until Brenda, the attractive corpse he'd met in a less animated state earlier, pulled him into the cemetery, threw him down on a slab and shagged him silly. ~ Daniel Younger

And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61] ~ Julian Barnes

Here's in extreme example: the possibility of life after death. When considered rationally, there is no justification for believing that anything happens to anyone upon the moment of his or her death. There is no reasonable counter to the prospect of nothingness. Any anecdotal story about "floating toward a white light" or Shirley MacClain's past life on Atlantis or the details in Heaven Is for Real or automatically (and justifiably) dismissed by any secular intellectual. Yet this wholly logical position discounts the overwhelming likelihood that we currently don't know something critical about the experience of life, much less the ultimate conclusion to the experience. There are so many things we don't know about energy, or the way energy is transferred, or why energy (which can't be created or destroyed) exists at all. We can't truly conceive the conditions of a multidimensional reality, even though we're (probably) already living inside one. We have a limited understanding of consciousness. We have a limited understanding of time, and of the perception of time, and of the possibility that all time is happening at once. So while it seems unrealistic to seriously consider the prospect of life after death, it seems equally naïve to assume that our contemporary understanding of this phenomenon is remotely complete. We have no idea what we don't know, or what we'll eventually learn, or what might be true despite our perpetual inability to comprehend what that truth is.
Chuck Klosterman