The difference between a man of genius seen in his works and in person, is like that of a lighthouse seen by night and by day, — in the one case only a great fiery brain, in the other only a white tower.
Quotations about:
mundane
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Truths that startled the generation in which they were first announced become in the next age the commonplaces of conversation; as the famous airs of operas which thrilled the first audiences come to be played on hand-organs in the streets.
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself.
Henry Miller (1891-1980) American novelist
Plexus, ch. 2 (1953)
(Source)
Sometimes misquoted as "magnificent world".
Marriage is not just spiritual communion and passionate embraces; marriage is also three-meals-a-day and remembering to carry out the trash.
Joyce Brothers (1927-2013) American psychologist, television personality, advice columnist
“When Your Husband’s Affection Cools,” Good Housekeeping (May 1972)
Ever since I had dinner with Lou Reed I’ve tried to avoid meeting the people who would make me feel starstruck. It was a great dinner but by the end of it Lou Reed was no longer my hero, and I don’t have many heroes. I resolutely avoided meeting David Bowie, which became harder when I became friends with Duncan Jones, his son, and then got even harder when I moved to Woodstock and he lived around the corner. But I love the fact that the Bowie that I have is the Bowie in my head: a strange, evolving, absolutely fictional Bowie who became my hero when I was 11.
In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment.
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) English cleric and author
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in The Friends' Intelligencer (24 Jun 1882).
But though I’m not a spaceman,
Famous and renowned,
I’m just a guy that’s down to earth,
With both feet on the ground.
It’s all imagination,
I’ll never reach the stars.
My heart is still a fireball, a fireball,
Every time I gaze into your starry eyes.(Other Authors and Sources)
“Fireball XL-5,” st. 3 (1962)
(Source)
Charles Blackwell (lyrics), Barry Gray (music), Don Spencer (vocals).
What a day-to-day affair life is.
Jules Laforgue (1860-1887) Franco-Uruguayan Symbolist poet
“Complainte sur certains ennuis,” Les Complaintes (1885)
What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other….
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) English modernist writer [b. Adeline Virginia Stephen]
To the Lighthouse, Part 3, ch. 3 (1927)
I want death to find me planting my cabbages.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
“That to Philosophize Is to Learn to Die,” Essays (1588) [tr. D. Frame (1958)]
I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. It is my service to think how I can best fulfil the demands that each day makes upon me, and to rejoice that others can do what I cannot. Green, the historian, tells us that the world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker, and that thought alone suffices to guide me in this dark world and wide. I love the good that others do; for their activity is an assurance that whether I can help or not, the true and the good will stand sure.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) American author and lecturer
“Optimism,” Part 1 (1903)
(Source)
Often paraphrased as: "I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."
Evil is unspectacular and always human
And shares our bed and eats at our own table.
