To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.
Jack: Actually, I was found. Lady Bracknell: Found? Jack: Uh, yes, I was in... a handbag. Lady Bracknell: A handbag? Jack: Yes, it was... [makes gestures] Jack: an ordinary handbag.
One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair, that's a table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an ecstasy.
The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.
Neither men, nor gods, nor booksellers' shelves permit ordinary poets to exist.
[Lat., Mediocribus esse poetis
Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae.]