Distance From Lies Quotes & Sayings

That's my life: continually stepping up to and away from the edge of a hole that is by turn fascinating and terrifying- filled with whatever my faulty imagination dictates at any given time. It is absolutely imperative that I keep my distance, but the closer I get, the better I feel. Or the worse, And that's the ridiculous irony because I am compulsively drawn to this danger, and the closer I get, the closer I want to be. Those depths hold unimaginable escape-at times utter exhilaration, at others, pain so intense I can't begin to describe it. Either way the edge calls to me with it's lies that sound like promises. Soft seductive lies that I can't always resist. — Ka Hancock

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. — Dale Carnegie

We may go to the moon, but that' s not very far. The greatest distance we have to cover still lies within us. — Charles De Gaulle

Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour. — Joseph Addison

We don't tend to ask where a lake comes from. It lies before us, contained and complete, tantalizing in its depth but not its origin. A river is a different kind of mystery, a mystery of distance and becoming, a mystery of source. Touch its fluent body and you touch far places. You touch a story that must end somewhere but cannot stop telling itself, a story that is always just beginning. — John Daniel

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. — Anonymous

Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. Thomas Carlyle — Bohdi Sanders

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded. — Paul Klee

Ubicumque ex aequo ad caelum erigitur acies, paribus intervallis omnia divina ab omnibus humanis distant - From whatever point on the earth's surface you look up to heaven the same distance lies between the realms of gods and men — Seneca.

The clouds won't shatter my dreams, but this is a story about how I lost myself to the storm."
"And something's got me tethered to you ... "
"Always to you ... "
"They think I'm crazy ... I love him. I swear, I do."
"Then why are you here, T?"
"Esto es complicado, Eli. It's all the lies I made up to get away from you, the distance I drove to free myself, that's brought me here. It's that moment before your kiss and the sound of my name on your lips. It's you that's taken me the five miles I needed to be where you are. I won't run again."
"What are we doing?"
"We're LIVING. — Nadege Richards

And I thought of the Transit of Venus: that though the bodies be vast and distant, and their motions occult, their hesitations retrograde, one could, I thought, with exceeding care and preparation, observe, and in their distance, know them, triangulate to arrive at the ambits of their motivation; and that in this calculation alone, one might banish uncertainty, and know at last what constituted other bodies, and how small the gulf that lies between us all. — M T Anderson

It is no very good symptom, either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand. — Thomas Carlyle

Difficult is a far cry from impossible. The distance between these two lies hope. Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Invite one to stay. — Maya Angelou

Uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of — Douglas Adams

Every solution to every problem is simple. It's the distance between the two where the mystery lies. — Derek Landy

The levelling of the European man is the great process which cannot be obstructed; it should even be accelerated. The necessity of cleaving gulfs, distance, order of rank, is therefore imperative - not the necessity of retarding this process. This homogenizing species requires justification as soon as it is attained: its justification is that it lies in serving a higher and sovereign race which stands upon the former and can raise itself this task only by doing this. Not merely a race of masters whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an overflow of energy for beauty, bravery, culture, and manners, even for the most abstract thought; a yea-saying race that may grant itself every great luxury - strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative, rich enough to have no need of economy or pedantry; beyond good and evil; a hothouse for rare and exceptional plants. — Friedrich Nietzsche

All the worth of some people lies in their name; upon a closer inspection it dwindles to nothing, but from a distance it deceives us. — Jean De La Bruyere

His [the pedestrian's] elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts his at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was 'possessed' into a text that lies before one's eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god. The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive: the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more. — Michel De Certeau

Therein lies the insight: Even though you will continue moving forever - with each move taking you half the remaining distance to the wall - the total distance you travel can never be more than 2 feet, which is your starting distance from the wall. For mathematical purposes, the total distance you travel can be approximated as 2 feet, which turns out to be very handy for computation purposes. A mathematician would say that the sum of this infinite series 1 ft + ½ ft + ¼ ft + ⅛ ft ... converges to 2 feet, which is what our instructor was trying to teach us that day. — Charles Wheelan

The painter who strives to represent reality must transcend his own perception. He must ignore or override the very mechanismsin his mInd that create objects out of images(symbols) ... The artist, like the eye, must provide true images and the clues of distance to tell his magic lies. — Colin Blakemore

Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain,
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.
The mountain at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little,
And that 's the skies! — Emily Dickinson

I sit in front of the fireplace, with his arm around me solid as the back of a chair. I walk along the breakwater in the soothing Vancouver drizzle, the halftones of the seashore, the stroking of the small waves. In front of me is the Pacific, which sends up sunset after sunset, for nothing; at my back are the improbable mountains, and beyond them an enormous barricade of land.

Toronto lies behind it, at a great distance, burning in thought like Gomorrah. At which I dare not look. — Margaret Atwood

Writing a novel is a bit like being Daniel Boone. An author stands atop a ridge in a mountain range and can generally see a number of peaks in the distance. What lies between those peaks - the dales and glens, rivers, forests, and other features that distinguish one mountain landscape from another... is where the artistry and intrigue of the writing process lives. As the writer sets out into the story, leaving behind those high points - the beginning, a twist here and there, the climax, and, if perhaps a bit indistinct for the distance to cover, the end - entering the vale below, all manner of things can happen the writer never intended or expected at the onset. — Brett Armstrong

To most people, I fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be at a loss to reply, until they remembered what they had heard about astronomy, and the great size and distance and possible habitation of those orbs ... [We] persuade ourselves that the power of the starry heavens lies in the suggestion of astronomical facts. — George Santayana

It's impossible to attain much success in politics if you're the sort of person who can't abide disingenuousness. This isn't to say politics is full of lies and liars; it has no more liars than other fields do. Actually one hears very few proper lies in politics. Using vague, slippery, or just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it's not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you're saying something instead of nothing. — Barton Swaim

Realization: We render time by stitching together moments--flipping pages in the book of consciousness presents a continuous stream. Our senses too slow to realize the separation of moments, like a strand of pearls through eternity.

Time is terrifying, time is unspeakable. Clock-time lies down between moments ... but distance warps with velocity, time bends with velocity. Frames of reference. Are not absolute. Are selfish. A private reality. Clocks have a life of their own. Framed by references. — David David Katzman

California and Italy are about the same size. Roughly speaking, California contains about 150,000 square miles, Italy about 120,000 square miles. They are not dissimilar in physical characteristics. They extend over a long distance from north to south, and each has an extensive coastline. Each is destitute of coal mines. Each produces large quantities of wheat. Each produces citrus and other fruits, olives, wine, and raisins. The climate is about the same, although California's is superior. They are in about the same zone. Rome lies in about the same latitude as San Francisco. Our state is one of the richest and most fertile of all the United States. Yet suppose that California were as populous as Italy - someday it will be. Suppose it had a population of millions. Could California, even with its vast resources, support an army of a quarter of a million men as Italy does? She could do it only as Italy does, by grinding the people into the dust with oppressive taxation. — Jerome Hart

Beauty
be not caused," said Emily Dickinson. "It is."
In one way she was wrong. The scattering of light over a long distance creates a sunset. The crashing of ocean waves on a beach is created by tides, which are themselves the result of gravitational forces exerted by the sun and the moon and the rotation of the Earth. Those are causes.
The mystery lies in how those things become beautiful. — Matt Haig

The person who is impatient with weakness will be ineffective in his leadership. The evidence of our strength lies not in the distance that separates us from other runners but in our closure with them, our slower pace for their sakes, our helping them pick it up and cross the line. — J. Oswald Sanders

The heaven is spherical in shape, and moves as a sphere; the earth too is sensibly spherical in shape, when taken as a whole; in position it lies in the middle of the heavens very much like its center; in size and distance it has the ratio of a point to the sphere of the fixed stars; and it has no motion from place to place. — Ptolemy

To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. To accomplish this, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact, encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text. That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached. — Neil Postman

by the lane that turns immediately into the woods, or the broad road that lies open before him into the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some city, or a range of mountain-tops, or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low horizon. In short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy, without a pang — Robert Louis Stevenson

Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them. Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain, and the past irrecoverable. — Arthur Schopenhauer

We may not know what lies ahead of us in the future years, nor even in the days or hours immediately beyond. But for a few yards, or possibly only a few feet, the track is clear, our duty is plain, our course is illumined. For that short distance, for the next step, lighted by the inspiration of God, go on! — James E. Talmage

The past is no more; the future not yet. Nothing exists except the here and now. Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at our hands. — Bruce Lee

The foreground in a picture is always unattractive ... Art demands that the interest of the canvas should be placed in the far distance, where lies take refuge, those dreams which blossom out of fact and are man's only love. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,
nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon. — Henry David Thoreau

In the end, how much distance lies between the truth and what we believe to be true? Between the things we feel at one time and the things we end up doing? — Vu Tran

While the truth is putting on its shoes, the lie becomes a champion of a long-distance running. — Ljupka Cvetanova

The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place. — George Orwell

Attraction

The whites of his eyes
pull me like moons.
He smiles. I believe
his face. Already
my body slips down in the chair:

I recline on my side,
offering peeled grapes.
I can taste his tongue
in my mouth
whenever he speaks.

I suspect he lies.
But my body oils itself loose.
When he gets up to fix a drink
my legs like derricks
hoist me off the seat.
I am thirsty, it seams.

Already I see the seduction
far off in the distance
like a large tree
dwarfed by a rise
in the road.

I put away objections
as quietly as quilts.
Already I explain to myself
how marriages are broken--
accidentally, like arms or legs. — Enid Shomer

I am convinced that there is no great distance between heaven and earth, that the distance lies in our finite minds. When the Beloved visits us in the night, He turns our chambers into the vestibules of His palace halls. Earth rises to heaven when heaven comes down to earth. — Charles Spurgeon

Smell is a long-distance sense, a way of stretching time and finding out in advance what lies ahead. — Lyall Watson

Don't scrutinize people with a microscope; view them from a comfortable distance. And allow some room for compassion in the space the lies between you. — Douglas Pagels

At the same distance from it is the city of Sala, situate on a river which bears the same name, a place which stands upon the very verge of the desert, and though infested by troops of elephants, is much more exposed to the attacks of the nation of the Autololes, through whose country lies the road to Mount Atlas, the most fabulous locality even in Africa.
[ ... ] There formerly existed some Commentaries written by Hanno, a Carthaginian general, who was commanded, in the most flourishing times of the Punic state, to explore the sea-coast of Africa. The greater part of the Greek and Roman writers have followed him, and have related, among other fabulous stories, that many cities there were founded by him, of which no remembrance, nor yet the slightest vestige, now exists. [V,1] — Pliny The Elder