Quotes & Sayings About Distance Means Nothing

Because whenever anyone gets within a ten-foot radius of him, you go insane.
Any time someone even dares to suggest there's anyone in his life other than you, you go insane. Any time he's not within touching distance, you go insane. And any time you think he's falling away from you, that he's not there, you go insane. You've put your whole life into him; what do you think that means, Jacob? How can you possibly explain that and not make it sound like he's the axis your world spins on? Because if you can explain him away, and everything you feel for him away, then I'd like you to tell me how you function without a heart. — Giselle Ellis

He turned toward the bookshelf, his back to her, saying nothing. He held out one hand and she gave him the Eliot to shelve. His voice was rough. "'Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.'"
Caroline stepped back into her heels. "I always thought she stole that line from Homer. He was all about the 'winged words' in the Odyssey, and then Eliot comes along with that line and everyone falls all over it."
Brooks seemed to be examining the shelf again. "I thought you liked George Eliot."
"I do. I think she was brilliant. But what does that line mean, anyway? Is it about influence? Writing? Distance?" She shrugged, wishing he would step away from the books and turn around.
"Maybe it means that sometimes what we say doesn't come across the way we mean it to." He finally turned, his lips tilted up a bit at the corners. "I always liked 'nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.' I think that's the perfect Eliot quote for the moment we head off to a garden party. — Mary Jane Hathaway

I guess I should say a little bit about my method - I really am a fence sitter. I *loathe* Science and am always keen to attack it in most situations, though not here, because I love Reason and I'm perfectly aware of the difference. I also know what a concept means like Rules of Evidence. I'm not sure that's a concept as widely circulated in these circles as it needs to be - in other words, how *do* you tell shit from shinola? That's very critical. I think reason can only take us a certain distance, and then we have to go with the divine imagination, but with all safety systems fully in operation, or the divine imagination will lead us into complete paranoia. — Terence McKenna

To diagnose a system or yourself while in the midst of action requires the ability to achieve some distance from those on-the-ground events. We use the metaphor of "getting on the balcony" above the "dance floor" to depict what it means to gain the distanced perspective you need to see what is really happening. — Ronald A. Heifetz

It's a grace feather. See how its colors shift from green to blue, like the sea? It means remembrance. It shows that no distance, no amount of water between two people, will make them forget. Someone gave it to say that they remembered you. — Kirsty Logan

Whether he remained here, or found a means to leave, he ought certainly to possess himself of the best possible weapons. By the term Mr. Lecky understood some sort of firearm. The fact that he was totally unacquainted with the use of guns assisted him in the illusion that, given a revolver, he would instantly become formidable. Trusting machines as he did, he regarded a revolver as a small killing machine. He believed that its operation required little more than pointing and pulling a trigger. The revolver would obediently deliver, unerring and fast as light, death to a great distance. — James Gould Cozzens

The Infinite has to be a relative concept. Go any distance: an infinite space means that there is more to be explored. — Joseph Silk

Anamorphic is very difficult because the distance from the lens to the person to focus is very long so you need a lot of distance from the camera to the person so that means that you need a lot of space. — Jaume Collet-Serra

May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It seemed to me that Q. was talking about the nature of the midnight disease, which started as a simple feeling of disconnection from other people, an inability to "fit in" by no means unique to writers, a sense of envy and of unbridgeable distance like that felt by someone tossing on a restless pillow in a world full of sleepers. Very quickly, though, what happened with the midnight disease was that you began actually to crave this feeling of apartness, to cultivate and even flourish within it. You pushed yourself farther and farther and farther apart until one black day you woke to discover that you yourself had become the chief object of your own hostile gaze. — Michael Chabon

God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed. — Simone Weil

In saying that the truth is both said and not said by the philosopher (said and not said in the form of stammering), Aristotle was still close to the methods of interpretation used by grammarians in their commentaries on the poets. Symbolic or allegorical methods pointing out what was deliberately hidden by Homer behind the figure of Nestor or Ulysses.

But there is a difference however - and a crucial one - which is that for Aristotle the equivocation of the said and the not-said, this distance without gap which means that the truth is both hidden and present in the philosopher's words, this light that is shadow, is not the effect of an oracular kind of intentional secret or prudent reserve. If philosophers do not speak the truth, this is not because their indulgence wishes to protect men from its terrible face; it is because they lack a certain knowledge (savoir). — Michel Foucault

Hurrah!" cried one voice (need it be said it was that of J. T. Maston). "Distance does not exist!" And overcome by the energy of his movements, he nearly fell from the platform to the ground. He just escaped a severe fall, which would have proved to him that distance was by no means an empty name. — Jules Verne

Enchantment is the means through which we may gain access to sacredness. Entertainment is the means through which we distance ourselves from it. — Neil Postman

[talking about the Holocaust]
'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.'
'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be ... even on the Holocaust. — Alan Bennett

Kaysen elaborates through parts of the book on her thoughts about how mental illness is treated. She explains that families who are willing to pay the rather high costs of hospitalization do so to prove their own sanity. Once one member of the family is hospitalized, it becomes easier for the rest of the family to distance themselves from the problem and to create a clear boundary between the sane and the insane. Recognizing a family member or friend as insane makes others around them, says Kaysen, compare themselves to that individual. Hospitalization allows for distance from this questioning of self that makes us so uncomfortable. Her view that mental illness often includes the entire family means the hospitalized family member becomes an excuse for other family members not to look at their own problems. This explains the willingness to pay the high financial costs of hospitalization. — Susanna Kaysen

It is organized as a fellowship of men, a system of morals, a philosophy taught by degrees through the use of symbol, story, legend, pictures, and drama. It has served as a center of union among differing backgrounds, cultures, and countries. It serves as the means of conciliating true friendship among persons, who, because of differences, must have otherwise remained at a perpetual distance. — Harry S. Truman

Nanosecond precision matters for worldwide communications systems. It matters for navigation by Global Positioning System satellite signals: an error of a billionth of a second means an error of just about a foot, the distance light travels in that time. — James Gleick

Introvert integrity means going the distance for what we love: moving from apology to acceptance, from acceptance to acknowledgement, and from acknowledgment to activism. — Laurie A. Helgoe

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

To worship means to feel distance. But God is not distant. — John Speed

Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and shuffles, romance only sighs. — Margaret Atwood

This fight means the world to me. It's what I've been dreaming about since I was 10 years old to win a world title. I'm going in their with nothing less than a victory. I think it's safe to say the fight is not going the distance and it's going to be a fight of the year candidate. He's going to come to fight, I'm coming to fight and I plan on leaving September 8th as the new world champion — John Molina Jr.

Perspective is nothing more than a rational demonstration applied to the consideration of how objects in front of the eye transmit their image to it, by means of a pyramid of lines. The Pyramid is the name I apply to the lines which, starting from the surface and edges of each object, converge from a distance and meet in a single point. — Leonardo Da Vinci

But it does no good
solves nothing
to distance myself from the front lines of human need by using the mail as a safe shelter. I believe that serving the best ends of humanity means getting out in the middle of it just as it is, not staying home writing checks and thinking hopeful thoughts. The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are. And you're damned right that's idealistic. No apology. When idealism goes into the trash as junk mail, we're finished. — Robert Fulghum

Karrin smiled faintly and shook her head. "He always said you knew ghosts. You're sure it was really him?"
Mort eyed her. "Me and everyone else, yeah."
Karrin scowled and stared into the middle distance.
Mort frowned and then his expression softened. "You didn't want it to be his ghost. Did you?"
Murphy shook her head slowly, but said nothing.
"You needed everyone to be wrong about it. Because if it really was his ghost," Mort said, "it means that he really is dead."
Murphy's face ... just crumpled. Her eyes overflowed and she bowed her head. Her body shook in silence. — Jim Butcher

I couldn't will my beloved Berlin streets across the world or make the people I loved appear when I needed them, but by summoning the flavors of Berlin and the foods of my loved ones, my kitchen became my sanctuary, the stove my anchor.
Distance means nothing when your kitchen smells like home. — Luisa Weiss

The geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough ... You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life? — Seneca The Younger

One not only wants to be understood when one writes, but also quite as certainly not to be understood. It is by no means an objection to a book when someone finds it unintelligible: perhaps this might just have been the intention of its author, perhaps he did not want to be understood by "anyone". A distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to communicate its thoughts, always selects its hearers; by selecting them, it at the same time closes its barriers against "the others". It is there that all the more refined laws of style have their origin: they at the same time keep off, they create distance, they prevent "access" (intelligibility, as we have said,) while they open the ears of those who are acoustically related to them. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Telepathy' literally means to feel at a distance, just as 'telephone' is to hear at a distance and 'television' is to see at a distance. The word suggests the communication not of thoughts but of feelings, emotions. Around a quarter of all Americans believe they've experienced something like telepathy. People who know each other very well, who live together, who are practised in one another's feeling tones, associations and thinking styles can often anticipate what the partner will say. This is merely the usual five senses plus human empathy, sensitivity and intelligence in operation. It may feel extrasensory, but it's not at all what's intended by the word 'telepathy'. If something like this were ever conclusively demonstrated, it would, I think, have discernible physical causes -perhaps electrical currents in the brain. Pseudoscience, rightly or wrongly labelled, is by no means the same thing as the supernatural, which is by definition something somehow outside of Nature. — Carl Sagan

This evolution towards a real responsibility for others is sometimes blocked by fear. It is easier to stay on the level of a pleasant way of life in which we keep our freedom and our distance. But that means that we stop growing and shut ourselves up in our own small concerns and pleasures. — Jean Vanier

To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence. — Joseph Glanvill

An Oscar means a lot of things because it's like the ultimate award for a filmmaker so it feels great. But I think you have to consider awards with some distance and not get obsessed with it. When you're creating you shouldn't think about it. — Alejandro Amenabar

When taking Spock to see the spores, Leila comments, "It's not much further." having been beaten about the head severely on the difference between "further" and "farther," I believe I can say with some trembling confidence that she should say, "it's not much farther." "Further" means "to a greater extent or degree" whereas "farther" means "to a greater distance." (I know this is really picky, but hey, that's my business.) — Phil Farrand

Why value humility in our approach to God? Because it accurately reflects the truth. Most of what I am - my nationality and mother tongue, my race, my looks and body shape, my intelligence, the century in which I was born, the fact that I am still alive and relatively healthy - I had little or no control over. On a larger scale, I cannot affect the rotation of planet earth, or the orbit that maintains a proper distance from the sun so that we neither freeze nor roast, or the gravitational forces that somehow keep our spinning galaxy in exquisite balance. There is a God and I am not it. Humility does not mean I grovel before God, like the Asian court officials who used to wriggle along the ground like worms in the presence of their emperor. It means, rather, that in the presence of God I gain a glimpse of my true state in the universe, which exposes my smallness at the same time it reveals God's greatness. — Philip Yancey

HE had fled from her in an attempt to wipe out her memory, not only through distance but by means of a muddled fury that his companions a arms took to be boldness, but the more her image wallowed in the dung hill of war, the more the was resembled Amarant. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Arbitrary distinctions ... have always been the instruments of arbitrary power, the means of lulling and ensnaring men into their own servitude. For whenever we leave principles and clear positive laws, and wander after constructions, one construction or consequence is piled upon another until we get an immense distance from fact and truth and nature, lost in the wild regions of imagination and possibility, where arbitrary power sits upon her brazen throne and governs with an iron sceptre.' -said by John Adams, in Those Who Love, p. 166 — Irving Stone

The cheapest way to travel, and the way to travel the farthest in the shortest distance, is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar ... Any one of these things I mean, not all together. I have traveled thus some hundreds of miles without taking any meal in a house, sleeping on the ground when convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many respects more profitable, than staying at home. So that some have inquired why it would not be best to travel always. But I never thought of traveling simply as a means of getting a livelihood. — Henry David Thoreau

Whenever Jesus himself encountered gentiles, he always kept them at a distance and often healed them reluctantly. As he explained to the Syrophoenician woman who came to him seeking help for her daughter, "Let the children [by which Jesus means Israel] be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs [by which he means gentiles like her]" (Mark 7:27). — Anonymous

To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Magnetism also was an influence felt at a distance, and in a stunning anticipation of the idea of universal gravitation, Kepler suggested that the underlying cause was akin to magnetism: My aim in this is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork ... , insofar as nearly all the manifold movements are carried out by means of a single, quite simple magnetic force, as in the case of a clockwork [where] all motions [are caused] by a simple weight. — Carl Sagan

Friendship is just a made up word that we think means: I know you and trust you more than the average person I know. It really means: somewhere in the creation of our destinies we were meant to be the missing piece of each other with a bind unequaled to anything else in the world. We were meant to stay together no matter the physical distance. As long as we can both look up at the night sky and see the same moon we'll always have each other in sight. — Stephenie C. Walker

He had not stopped desiring her for a single instant. He found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns, especially in the most abject ones, and he would make her materialize in the smell of dry blood on the bandages of the wounded, in the instantaneous terror of the danger of death, at all times and in all places. He had fled from her in an attempt to wipe out her memory, not only through distance but by means of a muddled fury that his companions at arms took to be boldness, but the more her image wallowed in the dunghill of the war, the more the war resembled Amaranta. That was how he suffered in exile, looking for a way of killing her with his own death ... — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It cannot be denied that for a society which has to create scarcity to save its members from starvation, to whom abundance spells disaster, and to whom unlimited energy means unlimited power for war and destruction, there is an ominous cloud in the distance though at present it be no bigger than a man's hand. — Arthur Eddington

They say when you really love someone, you should be willing to set them free. So that is what I am doing. I will step back and you will move on. I will let you go ... Your happiness means everything to me. I will listen for your voice in the distance. I will look at the moon. I will keep you in my pocket. I will carry your smile with me everywhere, like a warm and comforting glow. — Tabitha Suzuma

Journalism, like history, has no therapeutic value; it is better able to diagnose than to cure, and it provides society with a primitive means of psychoanalysis that allows the patient to judge the distance between fantasy and reality. — Bill Vaughan