From The Distance Quotes & Sayings

Picture the Bay of Bengal as an expanse of tropical water: still and blue in the calm of the January winter, or raging and turbid with silt at the peak of the summer rains. Picture it in two dimensions on a map, overlaid with a web of shipping channels and telegraph cables and inscribed with lines of distance. Now imagine the sea as a mental map: as a family tree of cousins, uncles, sisters, sons, connected by letters and journeys and stories. Think of it as a sea of debt, bound by advances and loans and obligations. Picture the Bay of Bengal even where it is absent - deep in the Malaysian jungle, where Hindu shrines sprout from the landscape as if washed up by the sea, left behind. — Sunil S. Amrith

We perceive, as from a great distance, a thousand years filled with dim shapes of men moving blindly, performing strangely, in an unreal shadowy world. — Carl Lotus Becker

I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess (Bendis, the Thracian Artemis.); and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait. — Plato

There are three aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance: the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Perhaps he even needs to have been a critic and a sceptic and a dogmatist and an historian, and in addition a poet and collector and traveller and puzzle-solver and moralist and seer and 'free spirit' and nearly all things, so that he can traverse the range of human values and value-feelings and be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every wide expanse. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Morgon of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister. — Patricia A. McKillip

Moving on was always the end plan.
New York,he remembered, was a fair distance away.It should be far enough. As for tonight, he was going to have a shot of whiskey in his tea to help smooth out the edges. Then by God, he was going to sleep if he had to bash himself over the head to accpmplish it.
And he wasn't going to give Keeley another thought.
The knock on the door had him cursing under his breath.Though she'd been doing well,his first worry was that the mare with bronchitis had taken a bad turn.He was already reaching for the boots he'd shed when he called out.
"Come in,it's open.Is it Lucy then?"
"No,it's Keeley." One brow lifted, she stood framed in the door. "But if you're expecting Lucy,I can go."
The boots dangled from his fingertips, and those fingertips had gone numb. "Lucy's a horse," he managed to say. "She doesn't often come knocking on my door. — Nora Roberts

We are creating a unique experience. It's starts with how you see the building from a distance. — Helmut Jahn

I almost forgot," said Red. His voice sounded very strange, as if from a long, long distance. He reached into his pocket. "I have something for you."
He put it into my hand. A round, shiny, perfect apple, green as new grass with a faint blush of rosy pink. And now his eyes had changed so that I saw what lay there, hidden deep, so deep only the bravest or most foolhardy would seek to find it.
He has always understood me better, without words. So I laid my hand on my heart, held it there for a moment, and then moved it over and touched my palm against his breast. My heart. Your heart. — Juliet Marillier

We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life. — Alain De Botton

The most striking impression was that of an overwhelming bright light. I had seen under similar conditions the explosion of a large amount - 100 tons - of normal explosives in the April test, and I was flabbergasted by the new spectacle. We saw the whole sky flash with unbelievable brightness in spite of the very dark glasses we wore. Our eyes were accommodated to darkness, and thus even if the sudden light had been only normal daylight it would have appeared to us much brighter than usual, but we know from measurements that the flash of the bomb was many times brighter than the sun. In a fraction of a second, at our distance, one received enough light to produce a sunburn. I was near Fermi at the time of the explosion, but I do not remember what we said, if anything. I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the earth, even though I knew that this was not possible. — Emilio Segre

While we were at work there came nine or 10 of the natives to a small hill a little way from us, and stood there menacing and threatening of us, and making a great noise. At last one of them came towards us, and the rest followed at a distance. — William Dampier

Bits have unique properties, then, that we can use to our advantage: they're super-small, super-fast, easily acquired and created and copied and shared in near-infinite quantity, protected from the ravages of time, and free from the limitations of distance and space. In practice, though, bits reveal several paradoxes: they're weightless, but they weigh us down; they don't take up any space, but they always seem to pile up; they're created in an instant, but they can last forever; they move quickly, but they can waste our time. — Mark Hurst

When you reflect, you are able to put an experience into perspective ... reflective thinking enables you to distance yourself from the intense emotions of particularly good or bad experiences and see them with fresh eyes. — John C. Maxwell

The joy which we inspire has this charming property, that, far from growing meagre, like all reflections, it returns to us more radiant than ever. At recreation hours, Jean Valjean watched her running and playing in the distance, and he distinguished her laugh from that of the rest. For Cosette laughed now. — Victor Hugo

At the same yoga retreat, we stood and faced each other in pairs, really looking at each other from a close distance. We were told to simply BE with the other person, maintaining eye contact, with no social gestures like laughing, smiling, or winking to put ourselves at ease.
Grown women and men cried. Really and truly sobbed.
When we were finished with the exercise, we talked about how it had felt. The thread echoed again and again: many people had never felt so *seen* by another person. Seen without walls, without judgment ... just seen, acknowledged, accepted. The experience was
for so many painfully rare. — Amanda Palmer

I'm far from immune to the American, perhaps historically male, prejudice toward practical and physical competence; I hope I've also considered that prejudice enough to have some distance from it. — Robert Pinsky

I love her bare legs from a distance. When she's standing by a pool. When she's facing the water, thinking. Her legs are white as watermelon rind, veined blue from cold. There's that 'H' shape behind her knees. The H trembles softly with the swimming-water cold. — Jaclyn Moriarty

I think living with the absence of someone we love is like living in front of a mountain from which a person - a speck in the distance, on some distance ridge - is perpetually waving. — Simon Van Booy

Yes" Bazarov began, "man's a strange being. When you look at a quiet, dull life, like my good parents' life here, cursorily or from a distance, you think - what could be better? Eat, drink and know you're acting in the most correct, sensible way. But that's not how it is. Boredom descends. You want to engage with people, even if just to shout at them, but still engage with them. — Ivan Turgenev

A burst of harmony so brilliant that it almost overwhelmed them surrounded Meg, the cherubim, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins. But after a moment of breathlessness, Meg was able to open herself to the song of the farae, these strange creatures who were Deepened, rooted, yet never seperated from each other, no matter how great the distance.
We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are musicians. The farae and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation. — Madeleine L'Engle

Writers who hedge their use of unfamiliar, infrequent, or informal words with 'I know that's not a real word,' hoping to distance themselves from criticism, run the risk of creating doubt where perhaps none would have naturally arisen. — Erin McKean

I conclude by applying to political economy what Chateaubriand says of history: "There are," he says, two consequences in history; an immediate one, which is instantly recognized, and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; the former are the results of our own limited wisdom, the latter, those of that wisdom which endures. The providential event appears after the human event. God rises up behind men. Deny, if you will, the supreme counsel; disown its action; dispute about words; designate, by the term, force of circumstances, or reason, what the vulgar call Providence; but look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it, if it was not established at first upon morality and justice.3 — Frederic Bastiat

I came, then, to serve my Church first of all, and the whole world, that is, every person I find along my way. I serve and I will give of myself unto death so that there will be no distance between speaking and doing, so that the people will never again say, 'there is a chasm between us and the leaders' and word spread that the Church is far from her people. I know very well that our people are good and that they want from us today to go to them, to seek them out wherever they are, to search out the lost and return them joyfully to the fold. They hunger and thirst for the Word of God. — Metropolitan Ephraim Kyriakos

Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved him well - too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes, would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it - I would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup. — Charlotte Bronte

I have flown the distance of your body from side to side of your ivory coast. I know the forests where I can rest and feed. I have mapped you with my naked eye and stored you out of sight.
The millions of cells that make up your tissues are plotted on my retina. Night flying I know exactly where I am. Your body is my landing strip. — Jeanette Winterson

MYSTERIES, YES
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads. — Mary Oliver

History is the view from the cheap seats. Distance from the action provides a unique perspective; one can recognize the plays and appreciate the totality of certain events. — Debra Komar

But Aoi found it impossible to fully open herself up to any of her
new friends. She could laugh with them, rant with them, even play
at falling in love with them. But there remained a certain line she was loath to let anybody cross, and if someone tried to come closer
than that, she hastily erected a wall, not answering the phone and
staying away from classes until a more comfortable distance reasserted
itself. — Mitsuyo Kakuta

if you keep a distance to get a respect, keep a distance to keep the respect — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There's something about that tunnel that leads to downtown. It's glorious at night. Just glorious. You start on one side of the mountain, and it's dark, and the radio is loud. As you enter the tunnel, the wind gets sucked away, and you squint from the lights overhead. When you adjust to the lights, you can see the other side in the distance just as the sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach. Then, you're in the middle of the tunnel, and everything becomes a calm dream. As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get there fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. It really is a grand entrance. — Stephen Chbosky

Anyone who believes in the natural and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is obliged to accept that individuals have the right to buy and sell alcohol. That's why all the regulations that people take for granted-the restrictions on hours of operation, the ban on Sunday sales, the minimum distance from schools and churches, the minimum age, and the protection of local wineries from competition by wineries in other states-are illegitimate. — Sheldon Richman

But already his mind was racing ahead to his next encounter with humans. There was, he knew, a small encampment of Bedouin nearby. He'd spied their sheep-flocks and their fires from a distance, their men traveling on horseback, but until now he'd avoided them. He wondered, how did their lives differ from those of the caravan-men? Perhaps, instead of finding another caravan to follow, he would turn his wanderings toward their encampment. But should he remain content with observing them from a distance, when a much more intimate option lay available to him? — Helene Wecker

In the garden, the Captain of the Guard stared up at the young woman's balcony, watching as she waltzed alone, lost in her dreams. But he knew her thoughts weren't of him.
She stopped and stared upward. Even from a distance, he could see the blush upon her cheeks. She seemed young - no, new. It made his chest ache.
Still, he watched, watched until she sighed and went inside. She never bothered to look below. — Sarah J. Maas

What Are Those Things (With Big Black Wings)

What are those things with big black wings
Circling descending from up over head
Lie to me tell me that they're only robins
Tell me that your love for me will never be dead

Today all the rooms in our home feel like strangers
I wonder what makes me feel so out of place
Why have you suddenly emptied your closets
And why can't you look me in the face

What are those things with big black wings...

You faithfully promised you'd never leave me
You told me your heart have no room for goodbyes
But tell me what makes all this distance between us
And who put that leavin' in your eyes

What are those things with big black wings...
What are those things with big black wings... — Charlie Louvin

The label of 'marathoner' has, from the beginning, been awarded to those who went the distance under their own power, whether they ran, walked, crawled or tiptoed. When you cross that finish line, you've entered an elite group. About one-tenth of one percent of the population has done it. Don't let anyone take that great achievement away from you. — Jeff Galloway

It resembled the Catatumbo Lightning. At some distance from the coast, at a not-to-distant point, some angry god seemed to be unleashing an electric fury on the defenseless sea. Amanda watched with concern the uninterrupted succession of sparks, the sky regurgitating after swallowing the sun. And in the breeze, increasingly intense, she heard the echo of a menacing roar. — Me

The main characters in a novel must necessarily have some kinship to the author, they come out of his body as a child comes from the womb, then the umbilical cord is cut, and they grow into independence. The more the author knows of his own character the more he can distance himself from his invented characters and the more room they have to grow in. — Graham Greene

If you look from a distance, you observe a sea of roofs, and have no more knowledge of the dark streams of people than of denizens of some unknown ocean. But the city is always a heaving and restless place, with its own torrents and billows, its foam and spray. The sound of its streets is like the murmur from a sea shell and in the great fogs of the past the citizens believed themselves to be lying on the floor of the ocean. — Peter Ackroyd

ANTOECI (ANTO'ECI) n.s. It has no singular.[Lat. to inhabit.] In geography, those inhabitants of the earth, who live under the same meridian, and at the same distance from the equator; the one toward the north, and the other to the south. Hence they have the same longitude, and their latitude is also the same, but of a different denomination. They are in the same semicircle of the meridian, but opposite parallels. They have precisely the same hours of the day and night, but opposite seasons; and the night of the one is always equal to the day of the other.Chambers. — Samuel Johnson

The lost self: With the passing of the cosmological myths and the fading of Christianity as a guarantor of identity of the self, the self becomes dislocated, Jefferson or no Jefferson, is both cut loose and imprisoned by its own freedom, yet imprisoned by a curious and paradoxical bondage like a Chinese handcuff, so that the very attempts to free itself, e.g., by ever more refined techniques for the pursuit of happiness, only tighten the bondage and distance the self ever farther from the very world is wishes to inhabit as its homeland. The rational Jeffersonian pursuit of happiness embarked upon in the American Revolution translates into the flaky euphoria of the late twentieth century. Every advance in an objective understanding of the Cosmos and in its technological control further distances the self from the Cosmos precisely in the degree of the advance - so that in the end the self becomes a space-bound ghost which roams the very Cosmos it understands perfectly. — Walker Percy

In a sense I am able to interrogate myself, address myself from that slight distance and enter a kind of dialogical relationship with myself. Because I'm saying, "Look, these are things that have happened to me, but how odd they are or how ordinary they are [is up to the reader to decide]." — Paul Auster

There's so much distance between the fundamental rules and the final phenomenon, that it's almost unbelievable that the final variety of phenomenon can come from such a steady operation of such simple rules. — Richard P. Feynman

I loved him the way some people are to be loved - from a distance. — Sanhita Baruah

According to Mark 11:12-13, God's messengers were not the only ones who were incompetent: 'He [Jesus] was hungry. And on seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.'
Imagine Jesus, the divine, holy, wisest of the wise not knowing that figs were out of season. Now allegedly Jesus could have performed a miracle and made figs magically appear, but he preferred sour grapes instead: Then he said to the tree, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.' (Mark 11:14) — G.M. Jackson

If we are sowing lots of thoughts about shoes, cars, clothes, computer games, shopping, guns, and very few thoughts about things of the Lord, we will not reap spiritual maturity, spiritual priorities, greater desire for the Lord, or a closer relationship with the Lord. We will reap vanity, shallowness, and even greater spiritual disinterest and distance from the Lord. If we struggle with being uninterested in the things of the Lord, we need to consider that this is something we have actually done to ourselves. If we sow a desire to charm, amuse, or impress our friends, we will not reap relationships based on a selfless, sacrificial, Christ-like interest in our friend's spiritual welfare. We will reap self-serving, exploitive relationships that can actually drag our friends down. This is a life and death matter: what you are sowing in every little conversation that you have. Are you building up, edifying your friends? — Botkin

I've always enjoyed a challenge," Niko remarked, shifting through the powder to lift something out. "I think perhaps there are other things I could enjoy instead. Bonsai trees, painting, forging my own weapons. The opportunities are endless." He opened his hand to show me the small braid of several yellowed hairs. "Voodoo." "Think it would work?" I perked up. Killing from a distance wasn't usually my thing, but in this case, I'd make an exception. — Rob Thurman

As a child, young William alarmed his parents by reporting that he experienced visions. In later life he told his friends that he had seen angels among the haymakers in the fields, which still lay in easy walking distance from Broad Street. when he got home and reported the vision, he barely escaped a thrashing for telling a lie. More disturbingly, his wife once remarked, "You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old and he put his head to the window and set you screaming. — Leo Damrosch

Those who think that it is only necessary to feed and clothe the prisoner, and to act towards him in all things according to the law, are much mistaken. However much debased he may be, a man exacts instinctively respect for his character as a man. Every prisoner knows perfectly that he is a convict and a reprobate, and knows the distance which separates him from his superiors; but neither the branding irons nor chains will make him forget that he is a man. He must, therefore, be treated with humanity. Humane treatment may raise up one in whom the divine image has long been obscured. It is with the "unfortunate," above all, that humane conduct is necessary. It is their salvation, their only joy. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I struggle to conceive of the "resilience" I've developed in my job as a good thing - this hardening inside me, this distance I've put between myself and the world, my determination to delude myself into normalcy. From the cockpit, it feels like much more of a loss than a triumph. It's like the world's most not-worth-it game show: Well, you've destroyed your capacity for unbridled happiness and human connection, but don't worry - we've replaced it with this prison of anxiety and pathological inability to relax! — Lindy West

I like using LEGO bricks as a medium because I enjoy seeing people's reaction to artwork created from something with which they are familiar. ... My goal is to elevate this simple plaything to a place it has never been before. I also appreciate the cleanliness of the LEGO brick. The right angles. The distinct lines. But, from a distance, those right angles and distinct lines offer new perspectives, changing to curves. — Nathan Sawaya

She stared at the featureless iron and felt more keenly than ever the distance between them. Now. Now was the time to say what might be the last words he would ever hear from her.
"Fight," she said at last. "Win. — Suzannah Rowntree

Wonderful, darling Oksana, allow me to kiss you!" the encouraged blacksmith said and pressed her to him with the intention of snatching a kiss; but Oksana withdrew her cheeks, which were a very short distance from the blacksmith's lips, and pushed him away.
"What more do you want? He's got honey and asks for a spoon! Go away, your hands are harder than iron. And you smell of smoke. I suppose you've made me all sooty. — Nikolai Gogol

It isn't so very far from the elevated as distance goes, but it's centuries away as the soul goes. — H.P. Lovecraft

Occasionally we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims the canyon seems oceanic; at the surface of the river the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars we seem utterly remote down here. It is this know dimension if distance and time and the perplexing question posed by the canyon itself- What is consequential? (in one's life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet)- that reverberate constantly, and make the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie ... Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawing trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics ... — Barry Lopez

Upon any altar a tiny distance separates the worshipped from the sacrificed. — John Morse

Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other, and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so — Lord Chesterfield

Hana's voice is completely toneless. I can't tell if she's being sarcastic. But she is lucky, whether she knows it or not.
And there it is: Even though we're standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.
You came from different starts and you'll come to different ends : That's an old saying, something Carol used to repeat a lot. I never really understood how true it was until now. — Lauren Oliver

Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, present, and to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance that separates one's own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Up in the distance the whistle of the wind sang to her from the mountain. From Lucian's mountain. It beckoned and taunted and she wanted to run towards it. To be enveloped in its coat of fleece and to hear its safe sounds. — Melina Marchetta

Separation by death must finally be choked down,
but separation in life is a long anguish,
Chiang-nan is a pestilential land;
no word from you there in exile.
You have been in my dreams, old friend,
as if knowing how much I miss you.
Caught in a net,
how is it you still have wings?
I fear you are no longer mortal;
the distance to here is enormous.
When your spirit came, the maples were green;
when it went, the passes were black.
The setting moon spills light on the rafters;
for a moment I think it's your face.
The waters are deep, the waves wide;
don't let the river gods take you. — Du Fu

(It's a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of fourteen years from my lowest point, I haven't fully escaped. You get over it, but at the same time you never get over it. It comes back in flashes, when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But then, after a morning with the best five- and six-year-olds in the world, it subsided. it is now an aside. Something to put brackets around. Life lesson: the way out is never through yourself.) — Matt Haig

He that floats lazily down the stream, in pursuit of something borne along by the same current, will find himself indeed moved forward; but unless he lays his hand to the oar, and increases his speed by his own labour, must be always at the same distance from that which he is following. — Samuel Johnson

The way of the superior man may be compared to what takes place in traveling, when to go to a distance we must first traverse the space that is near, and in ascending a height, when we must begin from the lower ground. — Confucius

In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: he leaves the city. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But all three of them had had to lose things in order to gain other things. Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance, and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel; and Fiona had lost a big chunk of Marcus, and she got to stay away from the casualty ward; and Marcus had lost himself, and got to walk home from school with his shoes on. — Nick Hornby

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste. — Thomas Jefferson

Occasionally and frequently the exercise of the judgment ought to end in absolute reservation. It may be very distasteful, and great fatigue, to suspend a conclusion; but as we are not infallible, so we ought to be cautious; we shall eventually find our advantage, for the man who rests in his position is not so far from right as he who, proceeding in a wrong direction, is ever increasing his distance. — Michael Faraday

Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little,-diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God's mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness. — Joseph Hall

It's very hard from a distance to figure out who has lost their minds. One party, the other party, all of us, the president. — Claire McCaskill

Look," he tried, "put two men in a rail car, one a soldier, the other a farmer. One talks war, the other wheat; and bore each other to sleep. But let one spell long-distance running, and if the other once ran the mile, why, those men will run all night like boys, sparking a friendship up from memory. So, all men have one business in common: women, and can talk that till sunrise and beyond. Hell. — Ray Bradbury

In fifteen years, Sachs traveled from one end of himself to the other, and by the time he came to that last place, I doubt he even knew who he was anymore. So much distance had been covered by then, it wouldn't have been possible for him to remember where he had begun. — Paul Auster

Shorn of intimacy and seen from a considerable distance, we are all comic characters, farcical buffoons who bumble through our lives, making fine messes as we go, but when you get close, the ridiculous quickly fades into the sordid or the tragic or the merely sad. [p. 73] — Siri Hustvedt

Vimes was already lost. Oh, there was the sun, but that was just a direction. He could feel it on the side of his face.
And the camel rocked from side to side. There was no real way of judging distance, except by haemorrhoids. — Terry Pratchett

Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average, the total walking of an American these days - that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls - adds up to 1.4 miles a week ... That's ridiculous. — Bill Bryson

As they passed the giant saguaro cacti, Amelia knew they were getting close to home. They were magnificent, standing like humungous pitchforks in the middle of the desert. To her, it represented the American West...
Amelia noticed Sam in the distance. He seemed intrigued by the Teddy Bear Chollas. Sam was not originally from Arizona, so he seemed enchanted by the fuzzy little cactus.
As he reached toward it, Amelia yelled, "Stop! No! Don't touch that, Sam!"
But it was too late. The little razor sharp needles seemed to jump toward his finger... — Linda Weaver Clarke

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

His were always lighthearted notes from the places they'd visited, scrawled in the limited space on the back of the cards, whereas hers tended to be longer and slightly rambling, unrestricted by the confines of paper. But sitting there with the cursor blinking at him, he wasn't sure what to say. There was something too immediate about an e-mail, the idea that she might get it in mere moments, that just one click of the mouse would make it appear on her screen in an instant, like magic. He realized how much he preferred the safety of a letter, the physicality of it, the distance it had to cross on its way from here to there, which felt honest and somehow more real. — Jennifer E. Smith

Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade ... I live in great density ... Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage ... In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities. — Gaston Bachelard

Some people, he says, they hide themselves away from the eyes of the world. They hunker down and shiver. They find four walls high enough to put between them and everything else. Those people, to them the world is a frightful place. See, you and me, we're different. When we are called on to move, we move. It don't matter the cause or the distance. Revenge or ministration, reason or folly - it's all the same to us. — Alden Bell

She looked in the mirror and her hopes fell. "Our friend is behind us again and he's coming up fast. Closing the distance."
Then he knows we're on to him."
Christ! He's got a gun, Red! He's stuck his arm out the window."
Don't worry," Red told her. "Shooting a pistol left-handed from a moving car at another moving car at sixty miles an hour at this distance? Hell, he'd be lucky to hit that mountain."
There was a sharp crack and the rear window disintegrated into flashing shards. Something buzzed in the air between them and smashed into the tapedeck. Fee howled and ducked into his console.
Unless," Red continued thoughtfully, "that's Orvid Crayle behind us. He's very good. — Michael Flynn

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

In fact he was rather boring on the subject, but I kept quiet and took comfort in that old saying about fallen apples and their distance from trees. — David Nicholls

My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood. — Jeffrey Eugenides

You stare at your dream from a distance, longing, sighing, seeing what you deem is a warning of IMPOSSIBLE. But if you would squint real hard you would see the truth; the sign correctly reads 'I'M POSSIBLE. — Richelle E. Goodrich

And thus is the affair of our redemption ordered, that thereby we are brought to an immensely more exalted kind of union with God, and enjoyment of him, both the Father and the Son, than otherwise could have been. For Christ being united to the human nature, we have advantage for a more free and full enjoyment of him, than we could have had if he had remained only in the divine nature. So again, we being united to a divine person, as his members, can have a more intimate union and intercourse with God the Father, who is only in the divine nature, than otherwise could be. Christ who is a divine person, by taking on him our nature, descends from the infinite distance and height above us, and is brought nigh to us; whereby we have advantage for the full enjoyment of him. And, on the other hand, we, by being in Christ a divine person, do as it were ascend up to God, through the infinite distance, and have hereby advantage for the full enjoyment of him also. — Jonathan Edwards

Observing is not the same as experiencing.' Li Wei gestures angrily at my stump. 'You sit there and judge others from a safe distance every day. You assume because you watch us, you understand us. But you don't. — Richelle Mead

If feels good to live after death. It feels good to not be dead. It feels so good to find myself alive and flying home. The music plays in my ears and I float further and further away from war. Fucking Baghdad. — Michael Hastings

From Washington, proverbially "the city of distances," through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The further one separates himself from the precepts of the Christian Church, the further one distances himself from the truth. Only God can create. I make music from music. — Igor Stravinsky

In the last twelve years, we have come some distance towards reconciliation and the breaking down of disadvantage. Let us take encouragement from what has been achieved and set our minds and hearts to end the remaining roadblocks. — Malcolm Fraser

I steer clear of telling. I can't come out with it; the outlandish truth of me. How can I reveal this to someone innocent and unsuspecting? With those who know my story I talk freely about us ... but with others I keep it hidden, the truth. I keep it under wraps because I don't want to shock or make anyone distressed ... I try to keep a distance from those who are innocent of my reality. At best I am vague. I feel deceitful at times, but I can't just drop it on someone, I feel. It's too horrifying, too huge. — Sonali Deraniyagala

If you don't go to every level of your company, you distance yourself from the marketplace and from your people. — Aaron Levie

The traditional family table is round. No corners. No sides. No head. No tail. Everything is smooth. The food is in the center, and each family member reaches over the same distance. Someone you love is next to you on each side, and no one is last or at the end. The person farthest away from you is also the person facing you. — Deng Ming-Dao

It's more impressive," I said out loud. "From a distance, I mean. You can't see the wear on things, you know? You can't see the rust or the weeds or the paint cracking. You see the place as someone once imagined it. — John Green

WALLY: . . . That may be why I never understand what's going on at a party, and I'm always completely confused. I mean, we'll come home, and Debby will describe some incredible incident, and I won't have even noticed it. Everything passes in a kind of trance. You know, Debby once said after one of these New York evenings that she thought she'd traveled a greater distance just by journeying from her origins in the suburbs of Chicago to that New York evening than her grandmother had traveled in making her way from the steppes of Russia to the suburbs of Chicago. — Wallace Shawn

We're all like the little sailor. From the harbors we hear the strains of accordions and the murky soapy noises of the docks, from the mountains we receive the dish of silence that the shepherds eat, but we don't hear more than our own distances. And what distances without end and without doors and without mountains! — Federico Garcia Lorca

These sites have torn down the geographical divide that once prevented long distance social relationships from forming, allowing instant communication and connections to take place and a virtual second life to take hold for its users. — Mike Fitzpatrick

We live in an age of reproduction. Most of what makes up our personal picture of the world we have never seen with our own eyes
or rather, we've seen it with our own eyes, but not on the spot: our knowledge comes to us from a distance, we are televiewers, telehearers, teleknowers. — Max Frisch

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