Not Usual Quotes

#1. It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet what else is he?

Henry Ford

#2. Whenever he was en route from one place to another, he was able to look at his life with a little more objectivity than usual. it was often on trpis that he thought most clearly, and made the decisions that he could not reach when he was stationary.

Paul Bowles

#3. It's important to avoid mirrors if one is unprepared to accept their daily news, and I think, in something as insignificantly devastating as appearance, denial is more socially constructive than despondency. Not that there's anything especially wrong with me
just the usual.

Rivka Galchen

#4. Everybody in America is a part of this big herd of cattle being led to the marketplace, not to be sold, which is usual with cattle, but to do the buying. And everyone is branded.

George Carlin

#5. You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

Walker Percy

#6. I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal

#7. Do not to let your feelings (very natural and usual ones) of momentary irritation and discomfort be seen by others don't (as you so often did and do) let every little feeling be read in your face and seen in your manner ...

Queen Victoria

#8. You need to wait until you are worthy of having a child of your own.' She pats her hair down, which is rock hard. Her action is pointless, but she's worried about appearances as usual. 'And someone like you who's responsible for killing my babies - your own siblings - is not worthy.

Rebecca Berto

#9. Her hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays.

Raymond Chandler

#10. And then he sank back and tried, as usual, not to think. He must succeed. That's what the world was made for. That's what he was made for. That was what he would have to do.

Theodore Dreiser

#11. Accustomed to lure him into speaking of himself. But she put them far less spontaneously, far less adroitly, than usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in entering that room was not an anxiety to be trifled with.

Wilkie Collins

#12. The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustainedthe science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle's treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics.

Edgar Allan Poe

#13. This is not going to be business as usual. This is business unusual

Sebastian Coe

#14. But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it.

Wislawa Szymborska

#15. My dream is to collaborate with a mature person.I feel like my talents were being wasted in art school. I would like to try something else, but not the obvious or usual thing.

Frances Stark

#16. The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is not real to us as an artist, since we have to take on trust the works of art he produces.

Randall Jarrell

#17. My usual confessional is a straight Macallan but not before 5 o'clock. Perhaps that's why I try and have my crises in the evening.

Jeanette Winterson

#18. I've had a very unusual background in science - not the usual route of planning on being a scientist from age 3. I think my story shows that success is more about personal motivation and determination than it is about where you were born or what your economic status was.

Craig Venter

#19. When a man lives out his life under the sun and the stars, half the time riding alone over mountains and desert, then he usually has a religion although it may not be the usual variety.

Louis L'Amour

#20. The usual duty of the "intellectual" is to argue for complexity and to insist that phenomena in the world of ideas should not be sloganized or reduced to easily repeated formulae.

Christopher Hitchens

#21. So all in their different fashions pursued their daily lives, thoughtfully or not; everything seemed to be following is usual course, as is the way in monstrously strange circumstances when everything is at stake: we go on with our lives as though nothing were the matter.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

#22. The goal has been not to get pigeonholed. I like working in different genres. I'm gonna try to be entertaining and funny and do my usual thing.

Adam Mansbach

#23. The journalistic tradition so exalts novelty and flashy discovery, as reputable and newsworthy, that standard accounts for the public not only miss the usual activity of science but also, and more unfortunately, convey a false impression about what drives research.

Stephen Jay Gould

#24. Sometimes it's interesting to see something that you're not used to seeing, which is the main ingredient of life, and it's removed from the usual entertainment. I think it's important to give the opportunity to people to witness the life of somebody who was not public.

Michel Gondry

#25. Is the universe 'elegant,' as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual laws of particle physics, anyway. I think I might find the universal principles of String Theory most elegant - if I only knew what they were.

Leonard Susskind

#26. I get a little cranky with the whole business about kids not having attention spans. This reminds me of the usual business of thinking that the next generation is hopeless. Every generation has said that about every younger generation.

Robin McKinley

#27. I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so richly rewarding that I don't think of them as work in the usual sense of the word.

Joyce Carol Oates

#28. As usual, it struck me that letters were the only really satisfactory form of literature. They give one the facts so amazingly, don't they? I felt when I got to the end that I'd lived for years in that set. But oh dearie me I am glad that I'm not in it!

Lytton Strachey

#29. He did things to her, she realized. Strange, shivery things that left her breathless. He need only to look at her - not in his usual, conversational way, but to really look at her, to let his eyes settle on hers, deeply blue and insightful, and she felt naked, her soul bared.

Julia Quinn

#30. I just invited close friends and family, the usual suspects whose opinion I value but who I know will enjoy the film [ Before I Go To Sleep]. I don't know how difficult it is for them to suspend their disbelief because they obviously know me and what they're seeing is not me.

Mark Strong

#31. As usual I am suffering much from doubt as to the worth of what I am doing and fear lest I may not be able to complete it so as to make it a contribution to literature and not a mere addition to the heap of books.

George Eliot

#32. I have an intense need to be alone. Father has noticed I'm not my usual self, but I can't tell him what's bothering me. All I want to do is scream 'let me be, leave me alone!

Anne Frank

#33. My brother's always hungry late at night, if he comes home that is. He always eats cheesy chips while he's half asleep on the couch. I look around, but he's not here, and I don't find any crumbs tucked into the couch bedding. The usual stain from his boots is missing from the carpet, and I

Clarissa Wild

#34. Too much negotiating and not enough work on the court - that's what happened to me during the lockout. Too much talking and not enough training. I couldn't put in my usual offseason work routine. I think that all caught up to me, with my Achilles problems.

Patrick Ewing

#35. The first time Kiya met Hapi was over a year ago. On that day, she was at the temple - not to sell pigeons and bread as usual, but to pray and offer sacrifices on the altar of Horus - the God of protection.

Mirette Baghat

#36. He thought the ancient Babylonians knew the truth of existence, knew things that were lost later on. Lost or destroyed. Not just the usual stuff about wisdom.

Jonathan Aycliffe

#37. This is a truth so brutally self-evident that he can't fathom why it's not more widely perceived, hence his contempt for the usual public shock and outrage when a particular situation goes to hell

Ben Fountain

#38. Children are not our future, and I can prove it with my usual, flawless logic. Children can't be our future, because by the time the future arrives, they won't be children anymore, so blow me!

George Carlin

#39. I'd have to play this smart ... which was not my usual style.

Rick Riordan

#40. There were the usual deaths, yes, those to be expected, people who started off celebrating and ended up killing each other, uncinematic deaths, deaths from the realm of folklore, not modernity: deaths that didn't scare anybody.

Roberto Bolano

#41. Roland shook his head slowly. There was a lesson here, he realized, not a shining thing but something that was old and rusty and misshapen. It was why their fathers had let them come. And with his usual stubborn and inarticulate doggedness, Roland laid mental hands on whatever it was.

Stephen King

#42. Chicago is not a bad place to live. But the usual story of immigration is the happy fulfillment of human potential in America that is not available anywhere else - it's propaganda, really. It's more complicated than that.

Aleksandar Hemon

#43. A direful death indeed they had That would put any parent mad But she was more than usual calm She did not give a singel dam.

Marjorie Fleming

#44. D'Artagnan: Why is Athos sitting by himself?
Aramis: He takes his drinking very seriously. Not to worry, he'll be his usual charming self by morning.

Alexandre Dumas

#45. In any given project, there are a few moments where there is the usual disappointment, as it were, when you look in the mirror, and you realize you're not 23 and looking like Brad Pitt.

Kenneth Branagh

#46. And, fatigued by the merciless and enormous day, he lost his usual sane view of human intercourse, and felt that we exist not in ourselves, but in terms of each others' minds - a notion for which logic offers no support and which had attacked him only once before...

E. M. Forster

#47. To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.

Thomas Merton

#48. As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it.

Mark Twain

#49. His conversion to Christianity seems to have come about largely by thinking...It did not come by sudden intuition, or overwhelming vision, or even by the more usual path of conviction of sin calling for repentance and atonement.

Jocelyn Gibb

#50. Natasha tried to wedge herself into the conversation, but as usual the triangle would not widen into a square. p.302

Anthony Marra

#51. but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does. Saeed

Mohsin Hamid

#52. When people come up to me and say 'I hate you' or 'I love to hate you,' it's not the usual response that I thought I would've gotten halfway into my career. And then they say, 'I love your work.'

Robert Knepper

#53. To the question, "Why am I old?" the usual answer is, "Because I am becoming dead." But the facts show that I reveal more character as I age, not more death.

James Hillman

#54. Is it better, financially, to go to the physics department than the philosophy department?" Tsukuru asked. "When it comes to their graduates not earning anything, they're about even. Unless you win the Nobel Prize or something," Haida said, flashing his usual winning smile.

Haruki Murakami

#55. As we at all times criticise the Premier for his management of home affairs, call Mr Butler a fool for his Budget, find fault with Beecham's conducting, or Gielgud's performance, can we not, sometimes, say that our cricketers are not quite so brilliant as usual?

Margaret Hughes

#56. The problem with cap-and-trade and programs such as carbon capture and storage is that they all assume that business as usual can continue. The financial meltdown and peak oil has pretty much demonstrated that business as usual's not going to work.

Andrew Nikiforuk

#57. It's not only joy as an act of defiance; it's business as usual as an act of defiance. This is just: Do your thing.

Bono

#58. I have way too much going on, as usual, but fortunately it's all good stuff. I'm not complaining.

Brad Listi

#59. The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right.

Naomi Wolf

#60. And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job
where the machine seems to run on much as usual
I loath the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much.

C.S. Lewis

#61. Such general complaints of the scarcity of money do not always prove that the usual number of gold and silver pieces are not circulating in the country, but that many people want those pieces who have nothing to give for them.

Adam Smith

#62. The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.

Bob Schieffer

#63. Cleverness, as usual, takes all the credit it possibly can. But it's not the clever mind that's responsible when things work out. It's the mind that sees what's in front of it, and follows the nature of things.

Benjamin Hoff

#64. But it doesn't have to be this way. We can do things better. We need to stop doing business as usual and start focusing on end-to-end quality. Security needs to be built in from the start - not slapped on after the fact.

Gene Spafford

#65. This is not the time for partisan bickering. This is not the time for politics as usual. Some of us are Democrats. Some of us are Republicans. Some of us are Independents. Above all, we must be Oklahomans first.

Brad Henry

#66. I had schooled myself since the war-days never to speak of my enthusiasms; when other people did not share them, which was usual, I was hurt and my pleasure diminished; why was I always excited about things other people did not care about? But I could not hold in.

Robertson Davies

#67. She slept deeply, but as usual, she did not dream. It had been months; none of them was dreaming anymore. [p. 227]

Anne Lamott

#68. Because the oils work in a different way from antibiotics, they do not have the usual side effects, and they tend to stimulate the immune system instead of depressing it.

Robert Tisserand

#69. Nothing is more usual than the sight of old people who yearn for retirement: and nothing is so rare than those who have retired and do not regret it.

Charles De Saint-Evremond

#70. As usual, I'm working with stuff that was deliberately designed not to burn. But no amount of careful design by NASA can get around a determined arsonist with a tank of pure oxygen.

Andy Weir

#71. I worry about Bieber, man. That kid's wildly talented. I hope he doesn't fall down into the usual ways of young kids because it's so hard for someone to be responsible when they're not asked to be.

Channing Tatum

#72. I went from an unemployed actor's life to doing stand-up comedy, and that was fortuitous. It's not the usual way the crow flies, going from being in a TV sketch show to playing one of Shakespeare's finest characters, but, hey, that's the way it has happened.

Catherine Tate

#73. Obama not only falsely represented the Republican position - as usual - he shamelessly pretended that he was The One 'fighting so hard to cut middle-class taxes.' Baloney!

Bob Beauprez

#74. My brother, are you aware that you are presently taking the form of a rather large and distinctly emerald-hued bear? Not that it isn't an improvement on your usual excessive good lucks, but...

Deborah Blake

#75. It is usual that little streams put their mouths into big rivers. Most rivers can also be traced to the big sea. The fact that you start with a small choice does not mean you will be on that narrow road forever.

Israelmore Ayivor

#76. New York is strange in the summer. Life goes on as usual but it's not, it's like everyone is just pretending, as if everyone has been cast as the star in a movie about their life, so they're one step removed from it. And then in September it all gets normal again.

Peter Cameron

#77. Unknown in Paris, I was lost in the great city, but the feeling of living there alone, taking care of myself without any aid, did not at all depress me. If sometimes I felt lonesome, my usual state of mind was one of calm and great moral satisfaction.

Marie Curie

#78. I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.

James A. Garfield

#79. You shall find this to be God's usual course: not to give his children the taste of his delights till they begin to sweat in seeking after them.

Richard Baxter

#80. If you're afraid of inflation, I think - and if you can bring yourself to have a long horizon - and when I say long, I mean ten to 20 years, not the usual ten to 20 weeks - that locking up resources in the ground is a terrific idea.

Jeremy Grantham

#81. I began plotting novels at about the time I learned to read . The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy , and we can dismiss it with the restrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.

James A. Baldwin

#82. "We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well? ... "

Mikhail Bulgakov

#83. The challenges facing Britain required not just a cool head, but a heart burning with the desire for change - not business as usual but a bold vision.

Michael Gove

#84. We were just standing there, and her eyes were so interesting. Not in the usual way of being interesting, like being extremely blue or extremely big or flanked by obscenely long lashes or anything.

John Green

#85. Heavily armed men in uniform were everywhere, but there was nothing you could call genuine security: as usual, too many guns, not enough intelligence.

Terry Hayes

#86. In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.

Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

#87. We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually.

Beaumont Newhall

#88. But you perceive, my boy, that it is not so, and that facts, as usual, are very stubborn things, overruling all theories.

Jules Verne

#89. Death happened, and in the usual way it happens, and yet, not like anything else at all.

Hannah Kent

#90. You're in a strange mood,' said Damen. 'Stranger than usual.'
'I'd say I'm in a good mood.'
'A good mood.'
'Well, not as good a mood as Volo,' said Laurent. 'But the food's decent, the fire's warm, and no one's tried to kill me in the last three hours. Why not?

C.S. Pacat

#91. We may experience moments of profound inner peace, a sense of oneness with nature, or a sense of something that is more important that we're not reaching by the usual goals of human society. Perhaps we could say there's a common heart to all the religions.

Thomas Keating

#92. I can see exactly what not to do at the moment. No doubt through the usual process of elimination I'll arrive at my favourite strategy of total paralysis.

Don Paterson

#93. The Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse did not weep, however - it was not their custom. Their faces, a little less caustic than usual at least, expressed a gentle satisfaction at death's impartiality.

Thomas Mann

#94. He put the good old cup of tea softly on the table by my bed, and I took a refreshing sip. Just right, as usual. Not too hot, not too sweet, not to weak, not too strong, not too much milk, and not a drop spilled in the saucer. A most amazing cove, Jeeves. So dashed competent in every respect.

P.G. Wodehouse

#95. If you charge off with some political agenda that is not informed by clarity, you are going to end up with business as usual. The road to hell is paved with good intentions but it is not paved with clarity.

Terence McKenna

#96. He moved his head closer to mine and then stopped, his lips a few millimetres away from mine. I couldn't breathe, my heart was racing, but not from the usual fear I had. It was because I wanted to kiss him

Kirsty Moseley

#97. Lord St Simon: 'I presume your usual clients do not belong to the same class?'
Sherlock Holmes: 'No, indeed. My last client was a king.

Arthur Hall

#98. I'm not committed as a writer, in the usual sense of the term, either religiously or politically. And I'm not conscious of any particular social function. I write because I want to write. I don't see any placards on myself, and I don't carry any banners.

Harold Pinter

#99. Jeb had always said to think with your brain, not your emotions. He'd been right, as usual. So I put all my feelings in a box and locked it.

James Patterson

#100. Economic and financial crisis are getting much more usual, and they are not confined to a given country but they immediately spread all over the world, and you have to be prepared for that.

Sebastian Pinera