If we were to bring creativity down to earth, it would not have to be reserved for exceptional individuals or identified with brilliance. In ordinary life creativity means making something for the soul out of every experience.
|
This is the greatest honour I have ever received in my life. Peace has always been my greatest concern. Yet in my childhood I learned to love it. My mother - an exceptional, brilliant woman - used to speak to me about it when I was still a child, because in those years there were also a lot of wars. Moreover, I am Catalan. Catalonia had the first democratic Parliament much before than England. And it was in my country where there was a beginning of united nations. At that time - the eleventh Century - they met in Toluges - today in France - to speak about peace, because the Catalonian people of that time were already against war. That is why, the United Nations, which work only for the ideal of peace, are in my hearth, because everything relating to peace goes directly there. I have not played the cello in front of an audience since long years but I think I must do it this time. I am going to play a melody from the Catalonian folklore: The singing of the Birds. Birds, when in the sky, go singing: Peace, peace, peace. And this is a melody that Bach, Beethoven and all great people would have admired and loved. And, in addition, it springs up from the soul of my country: Catalonia.
|
It has, moreover, been proven that horror, nastiness, and the frightful are what give pleasure when one fornicates. Beauty is a simple thing ugliness is the exceptional thing. And fiery imaginations, no doubt, always prefer the extraordinary thing to the simple thing.
|
But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I'm anybody,...
|
Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.
|
We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay on the mount. The times of exaltation are exceptional, they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware lest our spiritual selfishness wants to make them the only time.
|
A new morality has burst upon us with some violence in connection with the problem of strong drink; and enthusiasts in the matter range from the man who is violently thrown out at 12.30, to the lady who smashes American bars with an axe. In these discussions it is almost always felt that one very wise and moderate position is to say that wine or such stuff should only be drunk as a medicine. With this I should venture to disagree with a peculiar ferocity. The one genuinely dangerous and immoral way of drinking wine is to drink it as a medicine. And for this reason: If a man drinks wine in order to obtain pleasure, he is trying to obtain something exceptional; something he does not expect every hour of the day; something which, unless he is a little insane, he will not try to get every hour of the day. But if a man drinks wine in order to obtain health, he is trying to get something natural; something, that is, that he ought not to be without; something that he may find it difficult to reconcile himself to being without. The man may not be seduced who has seen the ecstasy of being ecstatic; it is more dazzling to catch a glimpse of the ecstasy of being ordinary.
|
I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change and that passe abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.
|
What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.
|
I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.
|
I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.With the help of favourable measures great individuals might be reared who would be both different from and higher than those who heretofore have owed their existence to mere chance. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.
|
Garth has great size potential and runs very well. With a year in our weight program, he should start to blossom into the type of player who could have a solid college football career. His feet are exceptional, and his speed is as good now as any lineman we currently have.
|
General principles should not be based on exceptional cases.
|
Women, by their nature, are not exceptional chess players: they are not great fighters.
|
It's an exceptional achievement for everyone associated with the club, including the supporters.
|
Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.
|
When you have a taste for exceptional people, you always end up meeting them everywhere.
|
I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.
|
Life's so ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional. Exceptional talent, power, social position, wealth.... Drama begins where...
|
[Why did these strangers embrace her when her mother could not? At Planned Parenthood, she had met pro-life parents who supported abortions for their daughters.] Everyone has an exceptional case when confronted with difficult situations in life, ... That's what love is.
|