Far Away But Always Near Quotes & Sayings

All night, I talked to other people. I didn't look in his direction, but I always knew where he was. I was painfully aware of him. When he was nearby, my body hummed. When he was away, there was this dull ache. With him near, I felt everything. — Jenny Han

What falls away is always. And is near. — Theodore Roethke

She sat down about two yards away from him, near a large wandering jew. "I first heard about it at the faculty wives' tea." "Everything is discussed there. I'm aware of that." "Of course I would be the last to know. Wives always are." "Come, come, Clara, my patience and my time are running out." Without warning he lifted up one of her hand-painted china cake plates and threw it against the wall. The outrage snapped the tension in the room, and she could weep now with some mild comfort, but without, he could see, any shock or concern for the priceless plate. (Aunt Clayburn) "You admit then you have a lover," she said, examining the broken pieces of china, from her chair. "I don't admit any such god damned thing," he scoffed. "The ladies were certainly sold on the truth of it." "I wish I had the nerve to have a lover. I might have been a better writer. — James Purdy

The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke

We always imagine that the Supreme Being is very far away -many, many millions of light years away- yet It is very near, in our throat itself. — Krishnananda Saraswati

He missed everything about her, from her hot temper to her sassy retorts to the way her breath always seemed to catch every time her came near her. He missed the music of her laugh, the gentle touch of her hand, the clean scent of apples that seemed to cling to her skin. He even missed the way she completely spoiled Cinder and had stolen the wolf's loyalty away from him. — Crista McHugh

While the burning fish is tracing his arc
near the cypress, beneath the highest blue of all,
and the blind boy flies away in the white stone,
and the ivory poem of the green cicada
beats and reverberates in the elm,
let us give honor to the Lord
the black mark of his good hand
who has arranged for silence in all this noise.
Honor to the god of distance and of absence,
ff the anchor in the sea - the open sea ...
He frees us from the world - it's everywhere
he opens roads for us to walk on.
With our cup of darkness filled to the brim,
with our heart that always knows some hunger,
let us give honor to the Lord who created the zero
and carved our thought out of the block of faith. — Antonio Machado

To the glory of His name let me witness that in far away lands, in loneliness (deepest sometimes when it seems least so), in times of downheartedness and tiredness and sadness, always always He is near. He does comfort, if we let Him. Perhaps someone as weak and good-for-nothing as even I am may read this. Don't be afraid! Through all circumstances, outside, inside, He can keep me close. — Amy Carmichael

Even if it's very late at night. Someone's always awake in the world. But of all those things you could think up for people to be doing, I think going hungry would have to be your safest bet. Going hungry, pushing each other around, leaving bombs, breaking promises, leaving nothing. It happens far away all the time. But sometimes near. We're almost two kinds of people. Some of us see it on the evening news or read about it in the morning paper. And some of us get hurt. But, you know we all get hurt. Because even if you live in a very nice house like I do, sooner or later the lies and the fires have got to burn you. — Ann Druyan

The lives of men who have to live in our great cities are often tragically lonely. In many more ways than one, these dwellers in the hive are modern counterparts of Tantalus. They are starving to death in the midst of abundance. The crystal stream flows near their lips but always falls away when they try to drink of it. The vine, rich-weighted with its golden fruit, bends down, comes near, but springs back when they reach out to touch it ... In other times, when painters tried to paint a scene of awful desolation, they chose the desert or a heath of barren rocks, and there would try to picture man in his great loneliness
the prophet in the desert, Elijah being fed by ravens on the rocks. But for a modern painter, the most desolate scene would have to be a street in almost any one of our great cities on a Sunday afternoon. — Thomas Wolfe

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a
panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.
The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged
by four winds of four directions.
The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken
tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break
what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a
few miles away.
He hears the death song of his approaching prey:
I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star. — Joy Harjo

I want you to live up to your potential!"
"Let me go," I say quietly. I don't want to be your creature. I don't want to hurt people."
"The world has already hurt you," he counters. "The world put you here. You're here because of them! You think if you leave they're going to accept you? You think you can run away and live a normal life? No one will care for you.
No one will come near you-You'll be an outcast like you've always been! Nothing has changed! You belong with me! — Tahereh Mafi

How are you feeling?"
I leaned away from him. "Gross."
Aiden frowned. "Gross?"
"I haven't brushed my teeth or washed my face in days. Don't come near me."
He laughed. "Alex, come on."
"Seriously, I'm gross." I put my hand over my mouth.
Ignoring my protests, he leaned over and brushed my string hair back. "You're as beautiful as always, Alex."
I stared at him. He must not get out much. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

My best friend came to visit from far away. She took two planes and a train to get to Brooklyn. We met at a bar near my apartment and drank in a hurry as the babysitter's meter ticked. In the past, we talked about books and other people, but now we talked only of our respective babies, hers sweet-faced and docile, mine at war with the world. We applied our muzzy intellects to a theory of light. That all are born radiating light but that this light diminished slowly (if one was lucky) or abruptly (if one was not). The most charismatic people - the poets, the mystics, the explorers - were that way because they had somehow managed to keep a bit of this light that was meant to have dimmed. But the shocking thing, the unbearable thing it seemed, was that the natural order was for this light to vanish. It hung on sometimes through the twenties, a glint here or there in the thirties, and then almost always the eyes went dark. — Jenny Offill

I've always kind of pushed the envelope in terms of trying to get away with things no one else was going near. I always thought of myself like a mouse trying to get cheese that no one else could get without getting their tail snipped off. — Emo Philips

I always sleep well, dearest, except for when your hot body smothers me completely!"
Darcy grinned. "Forgive me. Even sub- consciously I must be near you. I have no control over the matter. Tea and a scone?"
"Yes, please." She sat, tucking her feet under her. "No need to apologize, William. I simply elbow you hard and you roll away, temporarily at least. Come winter you can re- pay the treatment when I slip my frozen feet between your thighs. — Sharon Lathan

I'm saying this because it's said breaths are stolen during a passionate kiss. That's not true, Gavin, because I literally can't breathe before your lips even touch mine. I try, but I'm unable to. I can't think when you look at me. You strip my mind bare. You always have, and it's beautiful and consuming. It's magical and everything a girl is supposed to feel. It's said you're truly in love with someone if your skin tingles from their touch. Mine tingles when I hear your voice; I don't need you to touch me. I can feel you when you're not near me. I feel you in my dreams. I felt you when you were a thousand miles away. — Gail McHugh

God! Molly, will you just stop and listen to me?" he begged, trying to wrap himself around me again.
I pushed him away. "What could you possibly say that I'd want to hear?" I demanded, slapping his lying arms away.
"I love you," he pleaded.
And it broke my heart into a thousand tiny pieces. Because it was only now, when I knew that I could never stand to be near him again, that he was telling me what I'd always wanted to hear. — Sarra Manning

Have we not all, amid life's petty strife,
Some pure ideal of a noble life
That once seemed possible? Did we not hear
The flutter of its wings, and feel it near,
And just within our reach? It was. And yet
We lost it in this daily jar and fret,
And now live idle in a vague regret.
But still our place is kept, and it will wait,
Ready for us to fill it, soon or late:
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.
Since Good, though only thought, has life and breath,
God's life
can always be redeemed from death;
And evil, in its nature, is decay,
And any hour can blot it all away;
The hopes that lost in some far distance seem,
May be the truer life, and this the dream. — Adelaide Anne Procter

Forget about showering with my fellow students in Tribeca Alternative's prison-style showers - one nozzle for four to six girls at a time - in the locker room.
It was impossible to work up a sweat during what passed for physical education class at TAHS, so there was no need to shower, anyway.
Well, impossible for me, considering that, in the past, whenever a volleyball or whatever came near me,
I'd always make sure to step calmly away to avoid it.
See? No sweat. No need for a shower. Problem solved. — Meg Cabot

Always imagine him close to you when you pray,' she explained. 'If you think of Him as near, then that's where you will find Him. And if you think of Him as far away, then that's where He will be. — Ayad Akhtar

Theodore Roethke said it best: I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.10 In — Carolyn Baker

Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door. — Meister Eckhart

Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive.... Virtually every page is a cliffhanger--you've got to force them to turn it."~ — Dr. Seuss

What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep — Deb Caletti