Ordinary life does not interest me.
I seek only the high moments.
I am in accord with the surrealists,
searching for the marvelous.
- Anais Nin
When ordinary life shackles me,
I escape, one way or another. No more walls.
- Anais Nin
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
- Jimmy Johnson
The opportunity for greater courage
comes in the most ordinary of moments.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Please sign-up for my Free Daily Inspirational Quotes and Insights Email on the form below.
Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Ordinary people seem not to realize
that those who really apply themselves
in the right way to philosophy
are directly and of their own accord
preparing themselves for dying and death.
- Socrates
A hero is an ordinary individual
who finds the strength to persevere
and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
- Christopher Reeve
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
- Elbert Hubbard
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is brave five minutes longer.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Exotic or ordinary, glamorous or plain,
exciting or boring - it's all in our point-of-view.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I am a plain ordinary magnificent creation of God,
just like every other plain ordinary
mountain, ocean, tree, animal, and human.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
On the ordinary view of each species
having been independently created,
we gain no scientific explanation.
- Charles Darwin
Reality doesn't impress me.
I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy,
and when ordinary life shackles me,
I escape, one way or another.
No more walls.
- Anais Nin
Well excuse me - we've got something
a little unusual going on here -
time travel, parallel universes,
or just a little common ordinary insanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
A miracle is nothing more or less than this...
Anyone who has come into a knowledge
of his true identity,
of his oneness with
the all-pervading wisdom and power,
this makes it possible for laws higher
than the ordinary mind knows of
to be revealed to him.
- Ralph Waldo Trine
When you open up to the ultimate,
immediately it pours into you.
You are no longer an ordinary human being -
you have transcended.
Your insight has become the
insight of the whole existence.
Now you are no longer separate -
you have found your roots.
- Osho
I only wish that ordinary people
had an unlimited capacity for doing harm;
then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
- Socrates
Jesus was all right,
but his disciples were thick and ordinary.
It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
- John Lennon
See beauty in those unexpected places.
(she asked herself how people could let Bach be background noise.)
See the opportunity in what looks like inconvenience.
(she steered clear of the traffic jam
and went to the bakery she's been meaning to stop at.)
She embraces the undeclared possibility
in what seems like just another ordinary day.
(her friend is scheduled for cancer surgery
and suddenly everything around her seems so very precious.)
- Mary Anne Radmacher
The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley
To deprive a man of his natural liberty
and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life
is worse then starving the body;
it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Life is really simple,
but we insist on making it complicated.
- Confucius
Life is not supposed to be fair.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life is as easy or as hard as you think it is.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I have found that if you love life,
life will love you back.
- Arthur Rubinstein
Life is best when I wish neither to hurry the future nor to slow it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life is always lived in the eye-of-the-storm
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get.
- the movie Forrest Gump
Life is a succession of lessons
which must be lived to be understood.
- Helen Keller
Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is
whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.
- Joseph Campbell
The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson
Bringing a childlike wonder
and a beginner's mind to life
maximizes both success and joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Success is failure recycled.
Life is death reborn.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The life of inner peace,
being harmonious and without stress,
is the easiest type of existence.
- Norman Vincent Peale
The book of life is filled with incoherent riddles.
Life's true lessons are inscribed in a corner of the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
- Oscar Wilde
Time, like life itself, has no inherent meaning.
We give our own meaning to time as to life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Your greatest gift to your family and friends is yourself -
your relaxed, happy, and fully-present self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To the young child, all life is a great adventure -
when did we grow so dull and brittle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller
Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again,
but expecting different results.
- Rita Mae Brown, also attributed to Einstein
Life is a journey - enjoy the journey.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Stand Tall, Stand Proud.
Know that you are unique and magnificent.
You do not need the approval of others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The essence of life is not in
the great victories and grand failures,
but in the simple joys.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
We Can Do It!
- WW II US Government Poster
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
No one can eliminate prejudices -
just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow
Seek first to understand,
then to be understood.
- Stephen Covey
Honor tradition AND question tradition.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
- John Lennon
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Change what you see,
by changing how you see.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
- Leonardo da Vinci
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow,
you gotta put up with the rain.
- Dolly Parton
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked,
in which you can walk with love and reverence.
- Henry David Thoreau
Move out of your comfort zone. You can only
grow if you are willing to feel awkward and
uncomfortable when you try something new.
- Brian Tracy
There are only two or three human stories,
and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely
as if they had never happened before.
- Willa Cather
A time for work, a time for play -
balance in all things.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The traveler sees what he sees,
the tourist sees what he has come to see.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Laugh when you can,
apologize when you should,
and let go of what you can't change.
Life's too short to be anything... but happy.
- Anonymous
Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession
as they torment us with their loss.
- Epicurus
We don't see things as they are,
we see things as we are.
- Anais Nin
I Dream This Day of Wondrous Things,
of Peace and Hope and Pride.
I Dance My Dance with Life Today,
I'm Filled with Love Inside.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life is defined more by its contrasts than its samenesses;
Life is defined more by its risks than the many securities.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Don't Take Anything Personally.
Nothing others do is because of you.
- Miguel Angel Ruiz (don Miguel Ruiz)
Life's burdens are lighter when I laugh at myself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life is lived in the living.
Set aside convention, caution,
and arbitrary "rules" about how
life is supposed to be lived.
Choose! Explore! Adventure!
Live life to the fullest.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Where there is no accusation of "fault,"
there can be no anger.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
He who takes medicine and neglects his diet
wastes the skill of his doctors.
- Chinese Proverb
It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are,
or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy.
It is what you think about.
- Dale Carnegie
Please sign up on the form below to receive my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.
May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.
Jonathan Huie jlh(at)jlhuie(dot)com - About & Disclosure