When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not...
I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading ...
Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God's blessing on the po0r rather than on the rich and would insist that it's not enough to just love your frie...
His [Death] voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, y...
A North Korean soldier would later recall a buddy who had been given an American-made nail clipper and was showing it off to his friends. The soldier clipped a few nails, admired the sharp, clean edges, and marveled at the mechanics of this simple it...
Life is about means not ends. There is no utopia to be gained, there is no end-state that is static and eternal, once accomplished. This was one of the great lies of communism. Likewise, capitalism offers the great deception that thanks to its machin...
And she was not beautiful asleep. Her expression slack and not angelic. The very ordinariness of it so beautiful he felt a yearning to be something more than he was or could be. And as good a player as he was, he knew as he turned on the reel to reel...
We’ve all heard that little woman who says, “Oh, it’s terrible what these young people do to themselves, in my lsi other drugs, is a terrible thing”. Then you look, the woman who speaks in this way: you have no eyes, no teeth, no brains, no s...
Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it's something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words,...
Blame yourself when things go wrong, and give credit to others when things go right. The process of giving other people credit is what it takes to build a team.” Sandberg, one of America’s great team builders, knows exactly what it takes to win.
Winners know what makes people tick by effectively tapping into our fears and aspirations. By listening very carefully and then repeating almost word-for-word exactly what they’ve heard, winners know how to articulate compelling needs—and product...
risk is everywhere and we all do take risk everyday, knowingly or unknowingly.Ordinary risk produces ordinary men and extraordinary risk equals extraordinary men. The unique line of boundary between the ordinary and the extraordinary is the risk they...
Writers write because they're writers. Because their imaginations boil up inside of them, waiting to overflow into the written word. Ordinary people have little capacity for unyielding imagination, whereas the natural-born writer can do little but yi...
Poetry rhymes, a song our souls need to nourish upon. Poetry is a drum, a sound our bodies wish to have. Poetry is organized, a reading our eyes wish to view. Poetry is refined, a structure our moral selves seek. Poetry is civil, instigating the worl...
There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they...
Wybie Lovat: I'm Wybie. Wybie Lovat. Coraline Jones: Wybie? Wybie Lovat: Short for Wyborn. Not my idea, of course. What'd you get saddled with? Coraline Jones: I wasn't 'saddled' with anything. It's Coraline. Wybie Lovat: Caroline what? Coraline Jone...
...And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once from his being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but--what shall I call Him? the Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watch...
For them, it was just an ordinary miracle.
I can't believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.
I'm not that old, and I haven't lived a life so far from the ordinary, really.
...the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle.