When ordinary life shackles me,
I escape, one way or another. No more walls.
- Anais Nin
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
Like a bird in flight, your life can soar
above the troubles of the world.
Breathe deep, choose, and break the shackles of your past.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I only wish that ordinary people
had an unlimited capacity for doing harm;
then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
- Socrates
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
Jesus was all right,
but his disciples were thick and ordinary.
It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
- John Lennon
The opportunity for greater courage
comes in the most ordinary of moments.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
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
Exotic or ordinary, glamorous or plain,
exciting or boring - it's all in our point-of-view.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
On the ordinary view of each species
having been independently created,
we gain no scientific explanation.
- Charles Darwin
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
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
I am a plain ordinary magnificent creation of God,
just like every other plain ordinary
mountain, ocean, tree, animal, and human.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man,
but he is brave five minutes longer.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
- Jimmy Johnson
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
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
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
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
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
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 only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on.
It is never of any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all
is the person who argues with him.
- Stanislaw Jerszy Lec
Life is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute -
only the last couple seconds are fatal,
but most people are scared to death the whole way down.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends
is that three out of four murders
are committed by people who know the victim.
- George Carlin
Oh, if only God would give me some sign.
If He would just speak to me once. Anything.
One sentence. Two words. If He would just cough.
- the movie Love and Death
You ask me if I keep a notebook
to record my great ideas.
I've only ever had one.
- Albert Einstein
I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage
is being able to make a right turn on a red light.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall
Life only
appears to be
rushing toward us
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
You are only young once,
but you can stay immature indefinitely.
- Anonymous
Only two things are infinite,
the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
The essence of all religions is one.
Only their approaches are different.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
If you want total security, go to prison.
There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on.
The only thing lacking... is freedom.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The claim "I was only following orders" has been used
to justify too many tragedies in our history.
- Captain Picard of the television series
STAR TREK: The Next Generation
The attempt to combine wisdom and power
has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
- Albert Einstein
I never make stupid mistakes.
Only very, very clever ones.
- John Peel
The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.
- George Carlin
Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition,
is not only a waste of energy
but the worst habit you could possibly have.
- Dale Carnegie
The reason I talk to myself is because
I'm the only one whose answers I accept.
- George Carlin
Love is only a dirty trick played on us
to achieve continuation of the species.
- W. Somerset Maugham
Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because
he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong
only because he has remained silent.
- Winston Churchill
Advertisements contain the only truths
to be relied on in a newspaper.
- Thomas Jefferson
I've developed a new philosophy...
I only dread one day at a time.
- the character Charlie Brown in Charles M. Schulz' Peanuts comic
I always pass on good advice.
It is the only thing to do with it.
It is never of any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde
Magic is natural to Wizards,
and only a little harder for the rest of us.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A doctor can bury his mistakes
but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Human beings are the only creatures on the planet
who tell time and think they have to earn a living.
- Buckminster Fuller
There are three hundred and sixty-four days
when you might get un-birthday presents,
and only one for birthday presents, you know.
- Lewis Carroll
Things may come to those who wait,
but only the things left by those who hustle.
- Abraham Lincoln
Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
- African Proverb
Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter
if only we could prevent girls from being girls.
- Anne Frank
Nothing in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.
- Marie Curie
Less is only more where more is no good.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Only dead fish swim with the stream.
- Anonymous
The only true love is love at first sight;
second sight dispels it.
- Israel Zangwill
The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper
is that your guests are so pleased
to feel how very much better they are.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Money is better than poverty,
if only for financial reasons.
- Woody Allen
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
- Albert Einstein
The physician can bury his mistakes,
but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines -
so they should go as far as possible from home
to build their first buildings.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
I believe totally in a Capitalist System,
I only wish that someone would try it.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous.
In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
- Winston Churchill
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely
only after they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Abba Eban
There is no such thing as public opinion.
There is only published opinion.
- Winston Churchill
It is only the poor who pay cash,
and that not from virtue,
but because they are refused credit.
- Anatole France
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born
at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
- Mark Twain
There is only one thing about which I am certain,
and that is that there is very little
about which one can be certain.
- W. Somerset Maugham
There are no facts, only interpretations.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Play with life, laugh with life,
dance lightly with life,
and smile at the riddles of life,
knowing that life's only true lessons
are writ small in the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt
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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.