Look In The Distance Quotes & Sayings

It's been 12 years now, and I think he still can read my smiles. The way my lips stretch, making my eyes look smaller than they already are. The way my cheeks turn a little red, forming new wrinkles near my eyes. The way the dimple on my face makes a visit whenever I smile meeting someone I haven't seen in ages.
It's been 12 years now, and I haven't smiled at him even once. — Sanhita Baruah

My head grew muddled with it all; the silly ways adults acted with one another, never saying what they meant, trusting in sighs and glances and distance to speak for them instead. How dangerous that was! How easy it must be to misinterpret a sigh or a look. — Melanie Benjamin

For those of us who can, there are certain precautions we must take in order to protect ourselves and those around us. The first and most important is this-never acknowledge the dead. Don't look at them, don't speak to them don't let them sense your fear. Even when they touch you" ... "The second thing you must remember is this," Papa said. "Never stray too far from hallowed ground." ... "Rule Number Three," he said. "Keep your distance from those who are haunted. If they seek you out, turn away from them, for they constitute a terrible threat and cannot be trusted." ... "Rule Number Four," he said sternly. "Never, ever tempt fate. — Amanda Stevens

It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: they look better from a distance. — Remy De Gourmont

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

I look to the right as I cross the bridge and smile to see the tip of the Eiffel Tower soaring over rooftops in the distance on the other side of the river. I've seen it in photographs a thousand times, but seeing it in person for the first time that reminds me that I'm really, truly here, thousands of miles away, across an ocean from home. — Kristin Harmel

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life ... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion
joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things. — Barbara Kingsolver

In the Renaissance, madness was present everywhere and mingled with every experience by its images or its dangers. During the classical period, madness was shown, but on the other side of bars; if present, it was at a distance, under the eyes of a reason that no longer felt any relation to it and that would not compromise itself by too close a resemblance. Madness had become a thing to look at: no longer a monster inside oneself, but an animal with strange mechanisms, a bestiality from which man had long since been suppressed. — Michel Foucault

Out of the window , I could see a tree in the distance -little more than a sapling, really, stunted and fragile, it's slender, brittle branches burdened by a precarious layer of snow. It was not healthy; I only had to look at it to understand that. — Gary William Murning

Romantic enthusiasm lifts the good aloft and removes it into the dim distance of the incomparable and unattainable; at the same time it portrays the good in a human countenance out of which it looks at us and we can look back at it, face to face, in admiration and ecstasy, and stretch out our arms towards it. Thus the moral good is represented in human, and at the same time superhuman, form; it is of our own kind, and yet above our kind; it confronts us, but makes no demands. IT is not really a standard and lacks the power to issues commandments. Both are given at once: the ethical which one would like to love; and the passive, the romantic, in which one wants to live. As a substitute for constant activity demanded by the ethical commandment, we have adoration in which the romantic impression of the moment in vented, and yearning which need only admire and enjoy but not achieve anything. — Leo Baeck

He crashed over me like a wave and I was drowning. He shone so brightly and I was burning. Touched, by his hands and his body and his unintended mercies, I needed my distance back. Difficult, though, when my skin sang at his closeness and I blazed with wanting. I wanted to put my lips against his neck. I wanted to lick the sweat from where it would gather like glitter in the secret hollows of his flesh. I wanted him naked in my arms, like I'd had him in Brighton, but with not even darkness between us this time. I wanted to give him pleasure. Lavish him in it. Bedeck him with it, like pirate gold. Weave him a crown of my lost dreams. I wanted to kneel at his feet and suck his cock. I wanted him on his back, so I could look into his eyes while I fucked him. — Alexis Hall

With her heart hammering in her throat, Ash asked, 'Will you do me the honor of dancing with me?' She looked up at Kaisa, and the huntress' look of bewilderment was changing, slowly, to a small, tentative smile. It steadied Ash, and she extended her hand across the distance. Kaisa came down the steps, took her hand, and said, 'Yes. — Malinda Lo

You will lose touch with people you thought you wouldn't, watch from a distance while these people get married, gain weight, lose weight, move across the country, and get new sets of friends you will never meet. But you will look at your pictures of them and remember the nights you drank too much rum with them and you will enjoy those moments immensely. You will know what it is like to experience true nostalgia - the feelings a Hot Pocket can elicit will be astounding. It will not be a bittersweet kind of thing, because you know that it's not as much growing apart as it is growing up.
There will be successes, and failures, and a lot of good and bad things. You will watch yourself and the people you choose to be with fall in love and get married, get jobs, get fired, get a terrible tattoo, have babies, get sick, get better, get worse, lose parents, grow older, grow smarter. Things will flash forward, pass before your eyes like the lights at a terrible nightclub. — Alida Nugent

But then why, when talking on the phone, did they quarrel, on average at least once every four sentences? Maybe, though the inspector, it was an effect of the distance between them becoming less and less tolerable with each passing day, since as we grow old - for every now and then one must, yes, look reality in the eye and call things by their proper names - we feel more keenly the need to have the person we love beside us. — Andrea Camilleri

Now as they made their way through the exuberantly crowded village, Daisy understood what Westcliff had meant. It was still early evening, and already it appeared that copiously flowing wine had loosened inhibitions. People were embracing, arguing, laughing and playing. Some were laying floral wreaths at the base of the oldest oak trees, or pouring wine at the roots, or ...
"Good Lord," Daisy said, her attention caught by a perplexing sight in the distance, "what are they doing to that poor tree?"
Matthew's hands clasped her head and firmly aimed her face in another direction. "Don't look."
"Was it some form of tree-worship or - "
"Let's go watch the rope-dancers," he said with sudden enthusiasm, guiding her to the other side of the green. — Lisa Kleypas

One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you start with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present, often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think that I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too Immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place. — Henri Nouwen

We in astrophysics we think of the universe all the time. So to us, Earth is just another planet. From a distance, it's a speck. And I'm convinced that if everyone had a cosmic perspective you wouldn't have legions of armies waging war on other people because someone would say, "Stop, look at the universe." — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Dear Depression, please keep your distance. Don't be nasty. Find some other person with more reason than me to look in the mirror and say: "What a pointless existence." Whether you like it or not, I know how to defeat you. You're wasting your time. — Paulo Coelho

The scenes in our life resemble pictures in a rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful. That is why to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and why, though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving as the only road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have been living the whole time ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely that in expectation of which they lived. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A person should go out on the water on a fine day to a small distance from a beautiful coast, if he would see Nature really smile. Never does she look so delightful, as when the sun is brightly reflected by the water, while the waves are gently rippling, and the prospect receives life and animation from the glancing transit of an occasional row-boat, and the quieter motion of a few small vessels. But the land must be well in sight; not only for its own sake, but because the immensity and awfulness of a mere sea-view would ill accord with the other parts of the glittering and joyous scene. — Augustus William Hare

In the whole of your absurd past you discover so much that's absurd, so much deceit and credulity, that it might be a good idea to stop being young this minute, to wait for youth to break away from you and pass you by, to watch it going away, receding in the distance, to see all its vanity, run your hand through the empty space it has left behind, take a last look at it, and then start moving, make sure your youth has really gone, and then calmly, all by yourself, cross to the other side of Time to see what people and things really look like. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Sixers pour in from every edge of the bridge. We humans back into the center as they lumber toward us. I have my knives out, but they might as well be toothpicks pointed at an army of grizzlies. "Penryn!" I look up to see Raffe watching me with anguish in his eyes as his Watchers hold him at a safe distance from us. — Susan Ee

It would be easier if they named jeans for celebrities so you'd know exactly what you were getting without even having to try them on. 'Mary-Kate' for itty-bitty jeans that come with a cartoonishly oversized caramel latte cup; 'Angelina Jolie' for jeans that are sold with two tiny Cambodian orphans stitched right into the back pockets; 'Katie Holmes', jeans which spell out 'help me!' in the fabric if you look very closesly; and 'Dina Lohan', self-promoting stage mom of Lindsay, for jeans that look OK from a distance, but when you get closer, are actually transparent.
For men, there could be 'David Hasselhoff' jeans, made entirely of cheese, and 'John Mayer' jeans which, when removed, become instantly bored and walk themselves to to the house of next 'it' girl in Hollywood. — Celia Rivenbark

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

We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing wildly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. — Thomas Carlyle

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

Ranger picked up and there was a moment of silence as if he was sensing me at the other end, taking my body temperature and heart rate long distance. "Babe," he finally said.
"Do you know the slum apartment building Bobby Sunflower owns on Stark?"
"Yes. It's on the same block as his funeral home."
"That's the one. I'm going in to look for someone. If you don't hear from me in a half hour maybe you could send someone to check."
"Is this a smart thing to do?"
"Probably not."
"As long as you know," Ranger said. And he disconnected. — Janet Evanovich

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

Tell me you're not going to do anything stupid." "I'm not that kind of guy, Peter." "Not usually, no. But I've seen the look you've got in your eyes. A guy so consumed with his demons he'd throw himself on a min to escape it. Then they send the little polished medal home to the people who love him. You've got a lot of people who care about you, Ben. Don't do that to them. If you don't trust yourself tonight, then let me shadow you." Ben sighed, looked back out in the darkness. "Fine, but keep a distance. I don't want anyone to think we're dating." "No chance of that. I wouldn't be caught dead dating an ambulance chaser. — Joey W. Hill

A long time from now someone unknown to me will stand on the white plain where I now stand. He will speak a different language and the mountains in the distance may have been ground down but there are certain constants that will reliably inform his life -- kings like great trees whose roots are watered in ignorance, men who come to war reluctantly only to discover they have the souls of jackals, and fortresses like mountains, as immovable and inevitable. I anticipate that a flash of intuition will make him look at the tumulus or crater or clamorous sprawling city where Troy once stood and intuit how many men once bent their minds toward its destruction. — Zachary Mason

She sees only what's gone, I see only what's stayed the same. Her hair is no longer halfway down her back or pulled up in a French pleat; nowadays it is cut close to her skull and the grey is allowed to show.
Those peasanty frocks she used to wear have given way to cardigans and well-cut trousers. Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person, and find them still. The same eyes that were in the same head when we first met, slept together, married, honeymooned, joint-mortgaged, shopped, cooked and holidayed, loved one another and had a child together. And were the same when we separated.
But it's not just the eyes. The bone structure stays the same, as do the instinctive gestures, the many ways of being herself. And her way, even after all this time and distance, of being with me. — Julian Barnes

More than other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. it sets at a distance, maintains the distance. in our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about an improverishment of bodily relations ... the moment domin ates the look dominates, the body loses its materiality -luce irigaray — Luce Irigaray

In the distance, the gestures of animals look human, the gestures of human beings bestial. — Malcolm De Chazal

I didn't want her turned, against both her will and nature, into those diligent, sad women who are bent on a lifelong course of quiet servitude, forever in fear of showing, saying, or doing the wrong thing. Women who are admired by some in the West- here in France, for instance- turned into heroines for their hard lives, admired from a distance by those who couldn't bear even one day of walking in their shoes. Women who see their desires doused and their dreams renounced, and yet- and this is the worst of it- if you meet them, they smile and pretend they have no misgivings at all. As though they lead enviable lives. But you look closely and you see the helpless looks, the desperation, and how it belies all their show of good humor. I did not want this for my daughter. — Khaled Hosseini

One must look at the next step on the path ahead, rather than the mountain in the distance, or one would never reach one's goal. — Cassandra Clare

I've never believed in measuring one's worth by the size of his or her bank account. I prefer to look at distance traveled. — Dan Rather

With relationships, I always had a reason why some time in the future would be better for me than it was that day. When I was fat, I thought I'd feel pretty when I was thin, and when I was thin, I thought I'd be happier if I was more toned and muscular and had more money to look more coordinated. I wasn't comfortable in my own skin unless there was a man there to tell me just how radiant that skin looked. I was a victim of low self-esteem and had the Soon syndrome bad. I was running toward a brighter future, unaware of the mirages I'd created in the distance. — Stephanie Klein

He had been violently confused by her real presence in the opposite inaccessible corner. For months he had been possessed by the imagination of her. She had been distant and closed away, a princess in a tower, and his imagination's work had been all to make her present, all of her, to his mind and senses, the quickness of her and the mystery, the whiteness of her, which was part of her extreme magnetism, and the green look of those piercing or occluded eyes. Her presence had been unimaginable, or more strictly, only to be imagined. Yet here she was, and he was engaged in observing the ways in which she resembled, or differed from, the woman he dreamed, or reached for in sleep, or would fight for. — A.S. Byatt

The modern way with God is to set him at a distance, if not to deny him altogether; and the irony is that modern Christians, preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligous world, have themselves allowed God to become remote ... for churchmen who look at God through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing him to pigmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pigmy Christians. — J.I. Packer

Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness ... But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Miss Haxby, I thought, gazed at the plodding women with a kind of satisfaction. 'See how they know their places,' she said. 'There must be kept a certain distance, look, between each prisoner.' If that distance is breached, the offending woman is reported and loses privileges. If there are women who are old or sick or feeble, or if there are very young girls - 'We have had girls in the past - haven't we, Miss Ridley? - of twelve and thirteen' - then the matron sets them walking in a circle of their own. — Sarah Waters

I am in a job where you always look in front of you. Unfortunately, the older you get, the less distance there is in front of you. — Arsene Wenger

The two creatures were sexless. But he of Malacandra was masculine (not male); she of Perelandra was feminine (not female). Malacandra seemed to him to have the look of one standing armed, at the ramparts of his own remote archaic world, in ceaseless vigilance, his eyes ever roaming the earth-ward horizon whence his danger came long ago. "A sailor's look," Ransom once said to me; "you know ... eyes that are impregnated with distance." But the eyes of Perelandra opened, as it were, inward, as if they were the curtained gateway to a world of waves and murmurings and wandering airs, of life that rocked in winds and splashed on mossy stones and descended as the dew and arose sunward in thin-spun delicacy of mist. On Mars the very forests are of stone; in Venus the lands swim. For now he thought of them no more as Malacandra and Perelandra. He called them by their Tellurian names. With deep wonder he thought to himself, "My eyes have seen Mars and Venus. I have seen Ares and Aphrodite. — C.S. Lewis

It is because he comes from so far away that nothing can seperate us. Nothing, no distances, no years, can be greater than the distance that's already between us, the distance of our sex, the differance of our being, our minds; that gap, that abyss which we bridge with a look, with a touch, with a word, the easiest thing in the world. Look how far away he is, asleep. Look how far away he is, he always is. But he comes back, he comes back, he comes back — Ursula K. Le Guin

She'd best get the hell outta here pretty damn quick.
Finally he stood and tossed some cash on the littered table then glanced at the pretty lady shifter. He frowned and gave Joe a look. "With the hunt going down tonight, it might be a good idea to give the little blonde a heads up. She needs to hit the road."
When Joe nodded, Mad shrugged, determined to put some distance between himself and the sexy stranger. "Best take off and see what's what, Joe. You take care now."
He felt the woman's eyes on him as he made his way to the door and stopped to return her stare.
A sound similar to white noise buzzed in his ears and fairly rattled his brain then stopped almost as soon as it started. Chills raced over his arms.
What the fuck? — Regina Carlysle

She could just distinguish his features, as he slept the perfect sleep. In this darkness, she seemed to see him so distinctly. But he was far off, in another world. Ah, she could shriek with torment, he was so far off, and perfected, in another world. She seemed to look at him as at a pebble far away under clear dark water. And here was she, left with all the anguish of consciousness, whilst he was sunk deep into the other element of mindless, remote, living shadow-gleam. He was beautiful, far-off, and perfected. They would never be together. Ah, this awful, inhuman distance which would always be interposed between her and the other being! There was nothing to do but to lie still and endure. She felt an overwhelming tenderness for him, and a dark, under-stirring of jealous hatred, that he should lie so perfect and immune, in an other-world, whilst she was tormented with violent wakefulness, cast out in the outer darkness. — D.H. Lawrence

An Evening Air
I go out in the grey evening
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.
I go out into the hard loneliness of the barren field of grey evening
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation.
In the gathering darkness a long, swift train suddenly
Passes me like a lighting.
Hard and ponderous and loud are the wheels.
As ponderous as the darkness, and as beautiful.
I look on, enchanted, and listen to the sounds of lamentation
In the soft fragrant air.
The long rails, grey-dark, smooth as a serpent, shiver, and
A soft, low thing cries out in the distance,
But the sounds are hard and heavy,
In the air the odor of flowers and the sounds of lamentation. — Samar Sen

Was it possible, she wondered, to have solitude together? She tried to imagine what he would do if after dinner she went to his study back home with her book or her laptop, and sat on the couch there instead of in the living room as they had in the early years. He might glance over the top of his computer with a look of surprise and then a smile of welcome. Hey there. Or there might be a moment's hesitation. She'd sit quietly nearby, each of them feeling the weight of the other int he room and a dampening of his or her own thoughts, each looking up expectantly when the other shifted in a chair or looked off into the middle distance. She might offer a snippet of commentary about something she was reading, but it would not be easily understood out of context. After an hour or so she would stand and stretch, murmur that sh though she'd call it a night, and the following night she'd go back to the living room. It was a gift, solitude. But solitude with another person, that was an art. — Nichole Bernier

That lame man you saw
is he grateful now? Is it worth it to get on his feet and spend the rest of his life dragging burdens like a mule? ... It's not much of a world, is it? Is it worth trying to bring Leah back into it?"
Thacia stood still in the road. "Oh, Daniel
yes! If only I could make you see, somehow, that it is!"
"All this
" she exclaimed, the sweep of her arm including the deepening blue of the sky, the shining lake in the distance, the snow-covered mountain far to the north. "So much! You must look at it all, Daniel, not just at the unhappy things. — Elizabeth George Speare

When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know? — Charlie Kaufman

Just as women fought for the vote, and that very achievement compels us to the polling stations, so women have fought for the right to exercise and participate in sport, and we cannot throw that away. From the women of ancient Greece putting their lives on the line just by watching sport, and the women in Iran who continue to risk imprisonment today by doing the same, to the likes of Kathrine Switzer who campaigned for women to be allowed to run any distance they liked, or Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand who demand the right to participate in sport as women, without being told what their labia should look like. We — Anna Kessel

I've tried Oculus Rift; I've played with the Steam VR rig. Both are mind-blowing. In a traditional video game setting, in a first-person shooter, you can see a tower in the distance. You can walk up to that tower and use your controller to look up. — Ramez Naam

You look concerned," Roshaun said from behind her.
Dairine scowled over her shoulder at him. "The whole universe is in danger," she said, "and we're not sure how to save it, assuming it can be saved. One of the Powers That Be has stuffed secret messages into my brain without telling me. And a friend of mine who happens to be my wizard's manual is being reprogrammed with software that even these guys haven't had time to beta test! Wow, Roshaun, why would I need to be concerned?"
Roshaun glanced at the ground. Another chair appeared for him, a slight distance from Dairine's. He lowered himself into it, stretching out his legs with a sigh. "Sarcasm," he said, "Amusing, if ineffective. — Diane Duane

From a distance, a clone's luminous eyes are meant to draw in humans and make them feel safe. Up close, the eyes appear hollow. Because of that, humans tend not to look into our eyes too closely, which I've been told is socially preferable, as eyes without souls behind them can be frightening. — Rachel Cohn

I look at pictures of you because I am afraid that you would notice me staring in real life. I looked at your picture today for countless minutes. It is closer than I'll ever get to you for real. I felt like I was looking at a captured animal at a safe distance. If you knew I was doing this, you would feel sickened and frightened. That's why you'll never know. Years will go by and you'll never know. I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love you more than I hate my loneliness and pain. — Henry Rollins

I look out on my language, two days later
A short absence is enough
for Aeschylus to open the door to peace
a short speech is enough
for Antonio to incite war
A hand of a woman in my hand
is enough
to embrace my freedom
and for the ebb and flow to begin anew in my body
(I See my Ghost Coming from a Distance) — Mahmoud Darwish

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

I remember, on one occasion, as I went round Addison's Walk, I saw him coming slowly towards me, his round, rubicund face beaming with pleasure to itself. When we came within speaking distance, I said 'Hullo, Jack! You look very pleased with yourself; what is it?'
'I believe,' he answered, with a modest smile of triumph, 'I believe I have proved that the Renaissance never happened in England. Alternatively' - he held up his hand to prevent my astonished exclamation - 'that if it did, it had no importance! — Jocelyn Gibb

The Quiet World
In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe. — Jeffrey McDaniel

If you look at the ability of a self-driving car to stay in the lane and not to speed and keep a good distance to the car in front of you, it actually does better than me. — Sebastian Thrun

Having second thoughts?" Puck's voice was soft and dangerous, a far cry from his normal flippancy. "I thought we put this behind us for now."
"Never," I said, matching his stare. "I can't ever take it back, Goodfellow. I'm still going to kill you. I swore to her I would." Lighting flickered overhead, and thunder rumbled in the distance as we faced each other with narrowed eyes. "One day," I said softly. "One day you'll look up, and I'll be there. That's the only ending for us. Don't ever forget. — Julie Kagawa

All power within the microcosm of my world was held and wielded by people who look like me. Plus, I think Nigerians all have this sense that they are better than everyone, including white people. So I have the privilege of a certain distance. It may just be that. So in a sense, I can't claim that as any ability that I have, simply a matter of circumstance. — Chris Abani

What are you looking for?" he asked. A car alarm was going off in the distance, and he cringed as if the sound were deafening.

"A ride," she answered. Some of the cars were too new, others too old. She finally stopped in front of a black sedan, nice enough, but not one of the models with fancy security and keyless entry.

"Break that for me," she said, nodding at the driver's side door.

"The window?" asked August, and she gave him a look that said yes, obviously the window, and he gave her a look that said I don't commit petty crimes very often before he slammed his elbow into the glass to shatter it. — Victoria Schwab

Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the smallest crisis. If a fight broke out between two small dogs, for example, Ketchum claimed that Bush would call the fire department and ask them to bring a hose; then the president would position himself at a safe distance from the dogfight, and wait for the firemen to show up. The part Pam liked best about this assessment was that Ketchum said the president would instantly look self-important, and would appear to be actively involved
that is, once the firefighters and their hose arrived, and provided there was anything remaining of the mess the two dogs might have made of each other in the interim. — John Irving

Do you imagine, Peter, that your Carpe Diem boots would look any less deluded to them than that guy's Tony Lamas do to you? There's a comeuppance for everyone, wherever you are, and the farther you go from your own fiefdom, the more ludicrous are your haircut, your clothes, your opinions, your life. Within easy walking distance of home are neighborhoods that might as well be in Saigon. — Michael Cunningham

Sometimes when I look at them from a distance, I try and squint my eyes and clear my mind. I peer at them the way a stranger would - without any emotions, just observations. In this large fortress I had created around my heart, the one that let me enter situations easily and leave even more easily, how did they find a cat flap that allowed them to crawl into my soul? — Twinkle Khanna

The universe seems to me infinitely strange and foreign. At such a moment I gaze upon it with a mixture of anguish and euphoria; separate from the universe, as though placed at a certain distance outside it; I look and I see pictures, creatures that move in a kind of timeless time and spaceless space, emitting sounds that are a kind of language I no longer understand or ever register. — Eugene Ionesco

As you put your sights on your goals - no matter how great and compelling they are - as you look into the distance, don't forget what is right in front of you today. No matter how great your dreams, no matter how great your destiny, the biggest thing you can do in any day is a small act of kindness. — Cory Booker

It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to do me a refined aesthetic favor, had touched my sleeve and said, "I want you to meet-" and led me to Nina, who sat in the corner of a couch, her body folded Z-wise, with an ashtray at her heel, and she took a long turquoise cigarette holder from her lips and joyfully, slowly exclaimed, "Well, of all people-" and then all evening my heart felt like breaking, as I passed from group to group with a sticky glass in my fist, now and then looking at her from a distance (she did not look ... ), and listening to scraps of conversation, and overheard one man saying to another, "Funny, how they all smell alike, burnt leaf through whatever perfume they use, those angular dark-haired girls," and as it often happens, a trivial remark related to some unknown topic coiled and clung to one's own intimate recollection, a parasite of its sadness. — Vladimir Nabokov

Still seasick?" Milo asked. "What does it look like?" Milo laughed. "I'll take that as a yes. I can't believe you've never been to sea before." "Believe it. Now go away and leave me to die." "Don't worry, it won't be much longer now. I can see land from here." Felix managed to raise his bloodshot eyes to see that, far in the distance, across miles upon miles of churning, open sea - His stomach flopped and gurgled. - was the edge of land. "Praise the goddess," Felix groaned. "I think I might stay in Kraeshia forever." "I — Morgan Rhodes

No matter how far away we are from each other in distance, or in time, when we look up into the clear night Sky. We will always see the same Moon. — Adam Stanley

Oh, the body - its hungers, needs, and limitations. You look at somebody and you realize that they're in there, inside there, somewhere, and how will you ever reach them, understand them? — Richard Siken

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

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

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

A mountain seen in the haze of distance must nevertheless look a solid heavy mountain. — Robert Henri

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

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

Up close, she could see the sharp, cold, look that she constantly shot at Mr. Treviso, particularly when there was a break, and she was waiting to come in. It shattered illusion for Mildred. She preferred to remain at a distance, to enjoy this child as she seemed, rather than as she was. — James M. Cain

Huskies get in trouble. Huskies are well-known to be escape artists. Why? Because they were bred to go long-distance. They're not bred to be in the backyard and just look beautiful because they have blue eyes. — Cesar Millan

A vast canvass had been stretched across the back of [the stage] and painted to look like an idealized vision of Golden Square stretching off into a hazy distance. Before it, model town houses had been erected to perfect the illusion. It tricked the eye very well until a bloody, slashed-up man vaulted over the parapets and rolled to the ground in the deep upstage. He looked like a giant, thirty feet tall, fee-fie-fo-fumming around Golden Square and bleeding on the bowling green, which was most inexplicable, until a moment later, the very fabric of the universe was rent open, for a blade of watered steel had been shoved through the taught canvas upstage and slashed across it in a great arc, tearing the heavens asunder. Through the gap leapt Jack Shaftoe, and then giants dueled in Golden Square. — Neal Stephenson

Please-tame me!' he said.
'I want to, very much,' the little prince replied. 'But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.'
'One only understands the things that one tames,' said the fox. 'Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me.'
'What must I do, to tame you?' asked the little prince.
'You must be very patient,' replied the fox. 'First you will sit down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

We want to get behind the beauty, but it is only a surface. It is like a mirror that reflects to us our own desire for good. It is a sphinx, an enigma, a sorrowfully irritating mystery. We want to feed on it, but it is only an object we can look on; it appears to us from a certain distance. The great sorrow of human life is knowing that to look and to eat are two different operations. Only on the other side of heaven, where God lives, are they one and the same operation. Children already experience this sorrow when they look at a cake for a long time and nearly regret eating it, but are powerless to help themselves. Maybe the vices, depravities and crimes are nearly always or even always in their essence attempts to eat beauty, to eat what one can only look at. Eve initiated this. If she lost our humanity by eating a fruit, the reverse attitude - looking at a fruit without eating it - must be what saves. — Simone Weil

Between what i see in a field and what I see in another field
There passes for a moment the figure of a man.
His steps go with "him" in the same reality,
But I look at him and them, and they're two things:
The "man" goes walking with his ideas, false and foreign,
And his steps go with the ancient system that makes legs walk.
I see him from a distance without any opinion at all.
How perfect that he is in him what he is - his body,
His true reality which doesn't have desires or hopes,
But muscles and the sure and impersonal way of using them. — Alberto Caeiro

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

I don't believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food systems have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life of plants or the true environmental impact of agriculture permits them any comfortable distance from cruelty. Everything in this world eats something else to survive, and that something else, whether running on blood or chlorophyll, would always rather continue to live rather than become sustenance for another. No animal wants to be penned up and milked, or caged and harvested, and you've never seen plants growing in regimented lines of their own accord. — Brian Awehali

Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilineal; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas. — Henri Poincare

Coco?" I whispered, standing still, hardly able to believe it. "Oh - Coco?" "It is impossible to imagine," a voice behind seemed to be saying from a great distance away, "how the dog could have reached this spot. For three days he has been immovable in his kennel." I dropped on my knees, and took his paw in my hand. He gave the faintest wag of his tail, and tried to raise his head; but it fell back again, and he could only look at me. For an instant, for the briefest instant, we looked at each other, and while we looked his eyes glazed. "Coco - I've come back. Darling - I'll never leave you any more - - " I don't know why I said these things. I knew he was dead, and that no calls, no lamentations, no love could ever reach him again. Sliding down on to the stone flags beside him, I laid my head on his and wept in an agony of bitter grief. Now indeed I was left alone in the world. Even my dog was gone. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

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

Looking out on the second day of our mission, I became aware that in the far distance, there was a distinctive-looking star. It stood out because, while all the other stars stayed exactly the same size and shape, this one got bigger and bigger as we got closer to it. At some point it stopped being a point of light and started becoming something three-dimensional, morphing into a strange bug-like thing with all kinds of appendages. And then, isolated against this inky background, it started to look like a small town.
Which is in fact what it is: an outpost that humans have built, far from Earth. The International Space Station. It's every science fiction book come true, every little kid's dream realized: a large, capable, fully human creation orbiting up in the universe.
And it felt miraculous that soon we'd be docked there, and the next phase of our expedition would begin. — Chris Hadfield

Look at that mallard as he floats on the lake; see his elevated head glittering with emerald green, his amber eyes glancing in the light! Even at this distance, he has marked you, and suspects that you bear no goodwill towards him, for he sees that you have a gun, and he has many a time been frightened by its report, or that of some other. The wary bird draws his feet under his body, springs upon then, opens his wings, and with loud quacks bids you farewell. — John James Audubon

In war, more than anywhere else in the world, things happen differently from what we had expected, and look differently when near from what they did at a distance. — Carl Von Clausewitz

An old Hasidic rabbi asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and day begun, for daybreak is the time for certain holy prayers. "Is it," proposed one student, "when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?" "No," answered the rabbi. "Is it when you can clearly see the lines on your own palm?" "Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell if it is a fig or a pear tree?" "No," answered the rabbi each time. "Then what is it?" the pupils demanded. "It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that they are your sister or brother. Until then it is still night. — Jack Kornfield

I think the measure of advancement depends on where you are stood and from what distance you look. A thousand years ago, we farmed the fields, built towns and defended our land with swords and spears. It is little different now, save for the number of people we have to protect. We still kill with a sharp edge or point of metal, blood runs red still, sons ride off to war and parents grieve. If you look at the Empire in its whole, then it is peaceful. If you look closely, you will see the small wars, the bandits and rebellions. Look more closely still and you'll see the petty crimes, the struggle to survive, the rich bleeding the poor. Even the soil can turn against its farmers, yielding few crops. Or the weather, a late frost killing the early crops. There is strife and conflict everywhere in the Empire. Everywhere you find men, you find conflict. — G.R. Matthews

Travelling the dusty highways in the early evenings, just as the light began to fade, I would look out along the perpendicular dirt tracks that joined the road at intervals. They undulated away gently into the distance; slow streams of people in twos and threes and fours walked them, through the haze, talking easily, making their way back from wherever lay beyond. I longed to take every one of these turnings, to step out along every track in the morning, to return at dusk, to see what lay over each of these horizons and to share in the stories of those that returned from them. My trajectory, and that of each one of us, was that of a meteor, shedding millions of tiny sparks of possibility with every passing second, each with the capacity to ignite a flash of experience, but nearly all of which quickly burned up and vanished as it was left behind. The fire that moved forward was the flame of our lives. — Luke F.D. Marsden

The vast army of McClellan spread out before me. The marching columns extended back as far as eye could see in the distance. It was a grand and glorious spectacle, and it was impossible to look at it without admiration. — Daniel Harvey Hill

The oceans never stop ... the wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island ... Existence here is on the scale of giants. Time is in the millions of years; rocks which from a distance look like dice cast against the shore are boulders hundreds of feet wide, licked round by millennia ... — M.L. Stedman

All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part. — Virginia Woolf

If we become uncomfortable in any given moment, we can look at a flower, a pebble in the street or the tire on our car and be grateful. We can gaze at a person in the distance or at a cloud in the sky and be appreciative. We can smile at a stranger, hug someone we know or tidy a disorganized shelf and be thankful for the opportunity. If we choose gratitude, we will be happy! — Barry Neil Kaufman

I love you, more, I think, than I know, but our kind of love isn't a sword. It's a light. Not a fire. A small light, just bright enough to read love letters by and keep the animals at a growling distance. In time it will go out. All lights go out. So do all fires, if it's any comfort. Love me, and look at me, and remember me, as I'll remember you. — Peter S. Beagle