“The aviator himself detects nothing unusual”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)
Context: It is of interest to inquire what happens when the aviator's speed... approximates to the velocity of light. Lengths in the direction of flight become smaller and smaller, until for the speed of light they shrink to zero. The aviator and the objects accompanying him shrink to two dimensions. We are saved the difficulty of imagining how the processes of life can go on in two dimensions, because nothing goes on. Time is arrested altogether. This is the description according to the terrestrial observer. The aviator himself detects nothing unusual; he does not perceive that he has stopped moving. He is merely waiting for the next instant to come before making the next movement; and the mere fact that time is arrested means that he does not perceive that the next instant is a long time coming.<!--p.26

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Arthur Stanley Eddington 105

British astrophysicist 1882–1944

John Stockwell (1937) American activist

In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story, "Kinshasa"; ISBN 0393057054

“There's nothing unusual about love.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Variant: sometimes there's nothing to say
about
death.
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“She grunted. “Nothing unusual?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, if you ask me, that’s pretty unusual right there, if a body was smart enough to notice it.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 6.

“A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Source: Little Foxes (1865), Ch. 4.

“The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

“He's had a tough life. As is not unusual in Jewish families - if you've ever seen the movie Avalon - I think somebody's cut the turkey on Uncle Louis a few years ago… That doesn't change my view of him when I was young and he was a detective.”

Howard Safir (1941)

Safir, reponding to the disparaging comments made about him by his uncle, Louis Weiner (who captured the bandit Willie Sutton)
[Russ Baker and Josh Benson, http://www.observer.com/1999/commish-bites-back-howard-safir-explains-his-life-his-critics, The Commish Bites Back: Howard Safir Explains His Life to His Critics, The New York Observer, 1999-05-16, 2007-12-20]

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

“For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"The Snow Man"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: p>One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.</p

“And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.”

Philip Larkin book The Less Deceived

Coming
The Less Deceived (1955)

“American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.”

A.J.P. Taylor (1906–1990) Historian

"The Great War: The Triumph of E. D. Morel", p. 157
The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (1957)

“The aviator himself detects nothing unusual”

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Arthur Stanley Eddington 105

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