Ordinary Things Quotes

Do not try to do extraordinary things but do ordinary things with intensity. ~ Emily Carr

Holiness doesn't mean doing extraordinary things, but doing ordinary things with love and faith. ~ Pope Francis

Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks - all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere. ~ Virginia Woolf

Don't rule out magic in ordinary things.
Simply open your heart
Expand your mind
and believe.
Magic is all around;
it can be felt in raindrops touching your cheeks
and seen in rainbows after a storm.
Falling in love is also a magical thing. ~ Melody Lee

I don't think that my films are 'literary'; they are based on the most ordinary things of life. ~ Eric Rohmer

Some people may find material chores irksome; they would prefer to use their time to talk and be with others. They haven't yet realized that the thousand and one small things that have to be done each day, the cycle of dirtying and cleaning, were given by God to enable us to communicate through matter. . . . We are all called to do, not extraordinary things, but very ordinary things, with an extraordinary love that flows from the heart of God.

. . . A community which has a sense of work done well, quietly and lovingly, humbly and without fuss, can become a community where the presence of God is profoundly lived. . . . So the community will take on a whole contemplative dimension. ~ Jean Vanier

Timelessness again, the house like a secret temple as dust built up on things that were never meant to have dust on them - Clee's toothbrush and hairdryer and left-out-of-the-box CDs and deodorant on the bathroom window ledge. Ordinary things carefully kept in place because the last person to touch them would never put a cup down on the edge of the table again, or ever leave a book half-read. ~ Steven Hall

Champions don't do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they've learned. ~ Charles Duhigg

Great men and women are not extraordinary people who do extraordinary things. They are ordinary people who do ordinary things with integrity. ~ Jayce O'Neal

Time cannot do to ordinary things what we timelessly do to one another. ~ William H Gass

The very thought of you and I forget to do the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do ... ~ Mitch Albom

You know, heroes are ordinary people that have achieved extraordinary things in life. ~ Dave Winfield

Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me ~ Marilynne Robinson

I don't understand writers who feel they shouldn't have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that ... The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back. ~ Nadine Gordimer

You know when people can get excited over the ordinary things in life, they live ~ Harry Truman

(The Tao) is always present and always available ... If you are willing to be lived by it, you will see it everywhere, even in the most ordinary things. ~ Laozi

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window? ~ Pat Schneider

Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane. ~ Bram Stoker

May we all be faithful in doing the day-to-day, ordinary things that prove our worthiness, for they will lead us to and qualify us for great things. ~ James E. Faust

I want to observe the ordinary things of earth - the moon, the stars, the rainbows, even the yellow leaves of the old cherry trees - and receive their messages. To hear them say what every weary traveler, every earnest seeker, longs to hear. Welcome home. ~ Christie Purifoy

Domestic pain can be searing, and it is usually what does us in. It's almost indigestible: death, divorce, old age, drugs; brain-damaged children, violence, senility, unfaithfulness. Good luck with figuring it out. It unfolds, and you experience it, and it is so horrible and endless that you could almost give up a dozen times. But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on. Through the most ordinary things, books, for instance, or a postcard, or eyes or hands, life is transformed. Hands that for decades reached out to hurt us, to drag us down, to control us, or to wave us away in dismissal now reach for us differently. They become instruments of tenderness, buoyancy, exploration, hope. ~ Anne Lamott

A great man may not do great things but they do ordinary things greatly. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things. ~ Terry Pratchett

Hot soup becomes a king after a long walk in a snowy day! Everything carries the potential to be a respected king, even the most ordinary things! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These thing ~ G.K. Chesterton

We can never speak about God rationally as we speak about ordinary things, but that does not mean we should give up thinking about God. We must push our minds to the limits of what we could know, descending ever deeper into the darkness of unknowing. ~ Joy Williams

The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur. ~ Graham Swift

The idea is to take the most ordinary things and make them extraordinary, as Gerard Manley Hopkins does in his poems. ~ Alfonso A. Ossorio

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. ~ Waylon H. Lewis

I'd rather be an ordinary person doing extraordinary things, than being an extraordinary person doing ordinary things. ~ Kenneth G. Ortiz

A letter makes ordinary things seem important. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Champions are champions not because they do anything extraordinary but because they do the ordinary things better than anyone else. ~ Chuck Noll

There was that in the atmosphere of San Salvatore which produced active-mindedness in all except the natives. They, as before, whatever the beauty around them, whatever the prodigal seasons did, remained immune from thoughts other than those they were accustomed to. All their lives they had seen, year by year, the amazing recurrent spectacle of April in the gardens, and custom had made it invisible to them. They were as blind to it, as unconscious of it, as Domenico's dog asleep in the sun. The visitors could not be blind to it - it was too arresting after London in a particularly wet and gloomy March. Suddenly to be transported to that place where the air was so still that it held its breath, where the light was so golden that the most ordinary things were transfigured - to be transported into that delicate warmth, ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

By the 6th grade I stopped doing ordinary things in front of people. It had been ordinary to sing, kids are singing all the time when they are little, but then something happens. It's not that we stop singing. I still sang. I just made sure I was alone when I did it. And I made sure I never did it accidentally. That thing we call 'bursting into song.' I believe this happens to most of us. We are still singing, but secretly and all alone. ~ Lynda Barry

Your presence is a present to the world.
You're unique and one of a kind.
Your life can be what you want it to be.
Take the days just one at a time..Realize that it's never too late.
Do ordinary things in an extraordinary way.
Have health and hope and happiness.
Take the time to wish upon a star.
..And don't ever forget...
for even a day... how very special you are. ~ Collin McCarty

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

They both savored the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were ignorant of only ordinary things. ~ Terry Pratchett

There are no short cuts to Heaven, only the ordinary way of ordinary things. ~ Vincent McNabb

When all normal rules are suspended, and ordinary things that used to be important suddenly become meaningless. ~ L.J.Smith

I think part of your success lies in the shock of recognition- or as the Japanese might say, 'the unexpected recognition of the faithful "suchness" of very ordinary things'. ~ Charles J. Shields

Joy is found in the simple and ordinary things of life: the smile of a newborn baby, the kiss from a sweet new puppy, and the warm sunshine on a spring day. ~ Marie Cornelio

See the world through the eyes of your inner child.
The eyes that sparkle in awe and amazement as they see love, magic and mystery in the most ordinary things. ~ Henna Sohail

There are two distinct sides to a writer of fiction. First, there is the side he displays to the public, that of an ordinary person like anyone else, a person who does ordinary things and speaks an ordinary language. Second, there is the secret side, which comes out in him only after he has closed the door of his workroom and is completely alone. It is then that he slips into another world altogether, a world where his imagination takes over and he finds himself actually living in the places he is writing about at that moment. ~ Roald Dahl

Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember - no matter how ordinary things seem between us - I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will. ~ Richelle Mead

The holy things we need for healing and sustenance are almost always the same as the ordinary things right in front of us. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Our Lord Himself, not being detached from things externally. Our Lord was amazingly in and out among ordinary things; His detachment was on the inside towards God. External detachment is often an indication of a secret vital attachment to the things we keep away from externally. ~ Oswald Chambers

Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things ... as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

You take ordinary things and turn them rainbow bright. It's what makes you so special. ~ Christi Barth

The secret to life is finding joy in ordinary things. I'm interested in happiness. ~ Ruth Reichl

As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them
"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is. ~ Chaim Potok

Success is doing ordinary things extraordinary well. ~ Jim Rohn

Texting and phone calls, fireworks, blends, café au lait, and music. Yesterday's television. Work and beer. The neighbor's dog, or those strange flowers, the way it smells at Maisen. Those ordinary things I talk about with you. With you... I want to talk about love with you. ~ Tomoko Yamashita

I get the ideas from everything. Children sometimes think you have to have special experiences to write, but good writing brings out what's special in ordinary things. ~ Laurence Yep

She raised her eyes to his. They had both come from misery, she thought, and survived it. They had been drawn together through violence and tragedy, and had overcome it. They walked different paths and had found a mutual route.
Some things last, she thought. Some ordinary things. Like love. ~ J.D. Robb

They had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things-if love can ever be called that. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Clary, you're an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy - just different. There's nothing wrong with being different. ~ Cassandra Clare

I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy ever will. -Adrian- ~ Richelle Mead

It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy, just different. ~ Cassandra Clare

Sunday morning sneaks up on us
like dawn, like resurrection, like the sun that rises a ribbon at a time. We expect a trumpet and a triumphant entry, but as always, God surprises us by showing up in ordinary things: in bread, in wine, in water, in words, in sickness, in healing, in death, in a manger of hay, in a mother's womb, in an empty tomb. p.258 ~ Rachel Held Evans

It's the ordinary things that seem important to me. ~ Alex Colville

I think there is an element of magic in photography - light, chemistry, precious metals - a certain alchemy. You can wield a camera like a magic wand almost. Murmur the right words and you can conjure up proof of a dream. I believe in wonder. I look for it in my life every day; I find it in the most ordinary things. ~ Keith Carter

The three ordinary things that we often don't pay enough attention to, but which I believe are the drivers of all success, are hard work, perseverance, and basic honesty. ~ Azim Premji

He was in a state of wonder most of the time, the way a young boy is
engaged by the most ordinary things as if they were great miracles. ~ Josephine Humphreys

I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described. That's what I love when I read. ~ Alice McDermott

When you're in the middle of a nightmare, something ordinary is the only hope. Anyway, ordinary things are the best. I've always thought so. ~ Agatha Christie

Because I can't help doing it," he said with a shrug. "And hey, if I keep loving you, maybe you'll eventually crack and love me too. Hell, I'm pretty sure you're already half in love with me."
"I am not! And everything you just said is ridiculous. That's terrible logic."
Adrian returned to his crossword puzzle. "Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember-no matter how ordinary things seem between us-I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will."
"I don't think you're evil."
"See? Things are already looking promising. ~ Richelle Mead

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It's new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist. ~ Wendy Cope

Sylvie was pretty, but she was prettiest when something had just startled her into feeling that the world had to be dealt with in some way, and then she undertook the most ordinary things with an arch, tense, tentative good will that made them seem difficult and remarkable, and she was delighted by even partial successes. ~ Marilynne Robinson

The little room was full of ordinary things that had already become precious, that I couldn't help but want to have again, to feel like whoever it was I used to be, whether it was my past or someone else's. ~ Wendy McClure

The future sneaks up on us. It leaks in through the small, ordinary things. ~ Warren Ellis

Do ordinary things extraordinarily well. ~ Gregg Harris

It is the photographing of ordinary things, in extraordinary light, that produces extraordinary photographs. ~ David Young

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

The word normal would lose all of its meaning if it didn't have an opposite. And if there were no normal people, the world would probably fall apart - because it's normal people who take care of all the normal things like making sure there is food at the grocery store and delivering the mail and putting up traffic lights and making sure our toilets work properly and growing food on farms and flying airplanes safely and making sure the president of the United States has clean suits to wear. ~ Matthew Quick

What is it? The ordinary is EXTRAORDINARY. The ordinary is extraordinary. The ordinary is the thing we want back when someone we love dies. When someone dies or leaves or falls out of love with us. We call it "little things". We say, "it's the little things I miss most." The ordinary things. It's the little thing that brings them back to us unexpectedly. We say "reminds us" but it is more than reminding-it's a conflagration-it's an inundation-Both fire and flood is memory. It's spark and breach so ordinary we do not question it. The atom split. The little thing. ~ Lynda Barry

The trick is to maintain a kind of naïve amazement at each instant of experience - but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an object on your table, or the view from your window opens your eyes to how marvelous such ordinary things are. To look inside yourself is to open up an even more fantastical realm. ~ Sarah Bakewell

We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love. ~ Jean Vanier

History's smell.
Like old roses on a breeze.
It would lurk forever in ordinary things. In coat hangers. Tomatoes. In the tar on roads. In certain colours. In the plates at a restaurant. In the absence of words. And the emptiness in eyes. ~ Arundhati Roy

I'm always excited by the unlikely, never by ordinary things. ~ David Hockney

Let us go to an ordinary street to feel that life is beautiful with all the ordinary things, with cats around, with children playing, with laundries hanged out, with people wandering aimlessly! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

You're kind and patient and honorable, and yes, maybe those aren't flashy, magical, extraordinary traits. Maybe being all those things does make you a bit ordinary, but the ordinary things are the important things. ~ H.L. Burke

I read a bit of the Icelandic sagas. They're fascinating in that they are completely ordinary. The farmer will go off into the hills and fight a troll, and then go back and do ordinary things. It's an odd mix of fantasy and reality. ~ Jonathan Stroud

Is there anything more beautiful than gold?" - Freya's question.

Plain-thoughted Thor spoke. "A farm at first light
Is more beautiful than gold, or
A ship's sails in the mist.
Many ordinary things are far more beautiful. ~ George Webbe Dasent

The young artist ... will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. He will not try to make them extraordinary. Only their real meaning will be stated. ~ Allan Kaprow

The castle always looks so mysterious," she said, awed. "Is it wonderful, living there?"
"It isn't so mysterious when you're there. I'd rather look at it from the hills. It's just - full of people, at least the servants' parts are, crowded and ordinary. Things should be mysterious, but there's nothing mysterious in the palace."
"Should things be mysterious?"
"There's mystery in the hills and in the wind on the grass. And in the stories you like. Isn't life mysterious? ~ Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound. ~ James Joyce

The things that people were the most grateful for were the ordinary things in life. The sound of your spouse's laugh, the smell of morning coffee, the echo of children playing in the yard. The little things. In waiting for the big moments - the vacations, the retirements, the birthdays - we risk missing the experiences of life most worthy of celebrating. ~ John O'Leary

We have a knowledge of harmony, anchored deep within. It is this knowledge that enables us, at every instant, to apprehend quality in our lives and, on the rare occasions when everything is in perfect harmony, to appreciate it with the apposite intensity. And I am not referring to the sort of beauty that is the exclusive preserve of Art. Those who feel inspired, as I do, by the greatness of small things will pursue them to the very heart of the inessential where, cloaked in everyday attire, this greatness will emerge from within a certain ordering of ordinary things and from the certainty that all is as it should be, the conviction that it is fine this way.
~ Muriel Barbery

Even the most ordinary things can be made extraordinary simply by doing it with the right people. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Benedictine spirituality, after all,
is life lived to the hilt.
It is a life of concentration
on life's ordinary dimensions.
It is an attempt to do
the ordinary things of life
extraordinarily well. ~ Joan D. Chittister

Seeds are proof that God packages extraordinary miracles in ordinary things. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Champions do ordinary things better than everyone else. ~ Chuck Noll

The key is to be here, fully connected with the moment, paying attention to the details of ordinary life. By taking care of ordinary things - our pots and pans, our clothing, our teeth - we rejoice in them. When we scrub a vegetable or brush our hair, we are expressing appreciation: friendship toward ourselves and toward the living quality that is found in everything. This combination of mindfulness and appreciation connects us fully with reality and brings us joy. When we extend attention and appreciation toward our environment and other people, our experience of joy gets even bigger. In ~ Pema Chodron

The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles. ~ Michel De Montaigne

The "show business," which is so incorporated into our view of Christian work today, has caused us to drift far from Our Lord's conception of discipleship. It is instilled in us to think that we have to do exceptional things for God; we have not. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, surrounded by sordid sinners. That is not learned in five minutes. ~ Oswald Chambers

The true call of a Christian is not to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things in an extraordinary way. ~ Dean Stanley

I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don't try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary. ~ Andy Warhol

I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings. ~ Balthus

Those who look for the beauties in the extraordinary things will miss the beauties in the ordinary things! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things. ~ Thomas Merton