"Carmel Point"
Context: The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses —
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing...
“Heroes do extraordinary things. What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal.”
Irena Sendler (1910–2008) Polish resistance fighter and Holocaust rescuer
Quoted in "Irena Sendlerowa: Warsaw social worker who rescued thousands from the Jewish ghetto" by Rupert Cornwell in The Independent (14 May 2008)
“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”
Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer
Though widely attributed to Hillary on the internet, this appears to have originated as a quote about him in a Rolex advertisement.
Disputed
Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author
Let's Be Frank (1957)
Context: It was extraordinary to be in two places at once, doing two different things — extraordinary, but not confusing. He merely had two bodies which were as integrated as his two hands had been.
“I have seen so many extraordinary things, nothing seems extraordinary any more”
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer
“Patience and fortitude conquer all things.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
“The most ordinary things could be made extraordinary.”
Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One
Variant: Even the most ordinary things can be made extraordinary simply by doing it with the right people.
Source: The Lucky One
“There's ordinary people out there doing extraordinary things.”
Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist
Source: UnWholly
“It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
The Art of Persuasion
Context: It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.
