Measure The Distance Quotes & Sayings

Man is the measure. That was my first lesson. Man's feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong. — E. M. Forster

Out of the brown mouth into a slanted easterly rain they head south along the shore, pushed toward it on a light chop, all but the pilot huddling under plastic sheeting that covers lumber, nails, window casings and plantains - the women sharing a seat, Reese behind them and the boatman behind him in a narrow-running balance. The land retreats as the dory crosses a wide bight toward the next point, rising and dropping on larger waves while a seaside village of thatch and palm passes thin and blurry in the drizzled distance. Two miles later another village appears, much the same but longer along the curve and then, past the point, the coast is tangled in mangrove, grass and sea grape. The passengers peer out of the plastic at a rain-erased horizon as the dory slices and slows in equal measure and the boatman bails with a cut jug the rolling puddle at his feet. — Michael Jarvis

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

Success has always been easy to measure. It is the distance between one's origins and one's final achievement. — Michael Korda

I wondered if there would ever come a time in my life where I wouldn't measure distance by the amount of time it would take for a person to physically come on to me. — Asa Akira

Hope, Patrick knew, was the exact measure of distance
between himself and the person who'd come for help. — Jodi Picoult

You have to live life to the limit, not according to each day but according to its depth. One does not have to do what comes next if one feels a greater affinity with that which happens later, at a remove, even in a remote distance. One may dream while others are saviors if these dreams are more real to oneself than reality and more necessary than bread. In a word: one ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one's life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry. — Rainer Maria Rilke

If words are to be uttered, they would be from behind the partition. Unaccountable is distance, time to transport from this present minute.

If words are to be sounded, impress through the partition in ever slight measure to the other side the other signature the other hearing the other speech the other grasp. — Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Who is moving in the distance? It is the clock's pendulum, Hired by the god of death To measure life. — Gu Cheng

Qhuinn's eyes shifted away from his buddy
and just happened to measure the distance down to the stone patio below. Hmm ... doing a swan dive onto all that slate might just get the images of those two out of his head ... of course, it would also turn his brain into scrambled eggs, but really, was that such a bad thing? — J.R. Ward

The measure of space & time creates an echo of haunting distance between us, yet we are close, we are united in the love we forge together. — Truth Devour

There are many ways to tell if someone is a bit thick. You can sit them in a room and ask them to push various bits of plastic into a wooden box. Or you can ask them to describe a cloud. Or you can carefully measure the distance between their eyes, the height of their forehead or the length of their arm. — Jeremy Clarkson

Carol Guess's poems are sexy, intuitive, angry, and hopeful. These lyrical narratives measure the impossibly small distance between love and fear. They are a reminder that we're all vulnerable little vessels filled by the people who can break us. — Zachary Schomburg

The distance between who I am, and who I want to be is measure only, by my actions. — Anonymous

I suffer the anthropological malady diagnosed by Le vi- Strauss inTristes tropiques: I find it much more difficult to suspend value judgments about the society in which I normally reside than I do abroad. It takes physical and cultural distance to gain moral detachment and political noncommitment. Relativism implies a solid measure of indifference. — Pierre L. Van Den Berghe

Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve - but rather presents the "thou" in the transparent, but "incomprehensible" revelation of the "just there". That the presence of the other breaks into our own life - this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day. — Martin Heidegger

Reality is a system, completely ordered and fully intelligible, with which thought in its advance is more and more identifying itself. We may look at the growth of knowledge ... as an attempt by our mind to return to union with things as they are in their ordered wholeness ... . and if we take this view, our notion of truth is marked out for us. Truth is the approximation of thought to reality ... Its measure is the distance thought has travelled ... toward that intelligible system ... The degree of truth of a particular proposition is to be judged in the first instance by its coherence with experience as a whole, ultimately by its coherence with that further whole, all comprehensive and fully articulated, in which thought can come to rest. — Brand Blanshard

As he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face ... As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incomprehensible manner. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I can tell you I love you to the moon and back, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not enough. I can tell you I love you to the next universe and back and the distance still isn't enough to describe how I feel. I love you. I love you more than any word, any object, any emotion and any measure of distance this life can ever depict. — Skyla Madi

In magic - and in life - there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. 'Time' doesn't pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we're always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don't want and how to get what we have always dreamed of. — Paulo Coelho

The anger and shame of these women I hold in one hand, and the basin in the other. The distance between the two, the length I pace and try to measure, is the size of an abortion. — Sallie Tisdale

She glared down at the pan. And then she kicked it. The first kick sent it tumbling a couple of feet; something black and gooey came out. The second kick got better distance, maybe because it wasn't as heavy now. Evidently unsatisfied, she advanced on one of the pickups and grabbed a hammer from the back. Going down on one knee, she swung the hammer for all she was worth and beat the hell out of that pan, then she got up and kicked it one more time for good measure.
"Damn," Walt muttered. "I'm not ever going to say a single bad thing about her cooking.
"Yeah," Eli muttered in return. "No matter what it is, I'll eat it or die. Even that cake."
"More like, eat it and die," Patrick put in. — Linda Howard

Bhogpur is two kos from Bhagmalpur," he said. If Bhogpur is two kos from Bhagmalpur, then it may be possible to make a reasonable guess at our position. It depended on what he meant by a kos.
"There are seventy rassis in one kos," Karam Chand said.
"There are twelve hundred laggis in one kos," said Bhosla in a sudden garrulous outburst.
"There are three thousand six hundred gaj in one kos, said Jagganath, the youngest boatman.
"Now I am telling you," said G. "If one kos is three thousand six hundred gaj, there are three miles and eighty yards in one kos." If this was so, we had not travelled more than five miles since the previous morning.*
* There is also a gaukos, a rather vague measure - the distance a cow's bellow can be heard. — Eric Newby

Nothing passes the time, or shortens the path, like a thought which engrosses all the faculties of an individual's organisation. Our external Existence is as a sleep, of which this thought is the dream; and. whilst we are subjected to its influence, time has no longer any measure, nor is there any distance in space: we leave one place, and arrive at another, and are conscious of nothing between. Of the intervening scenes, the only remembrance preserved, is somewhat akin to the idea of an indefinite mist, partially broken by obscure images of mountains, trees, and plains. — Alexandre Dumas

Only poetry can measure the distance between ourselves and the Other. — Charles Simic

An onion-breathed technician in a lab coat measures the distance between Werner's temples, the circumference of his head, and the thickness and shape of his lips. Calipers are used to evaluate his feet, the length of his fingers, and the distance between his eyes and his navel. They measure his penis. The angle of his nose is quantified with a wooden protractor. — Anthony Doerr

But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you've closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you've done today. — Sonia Sotomayor

In life, there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure distance between two points. "Time" doesn't pass. — Paulo Coelho

I hope you forgive the unedifying sight of my struggle to express some of the truths of my inner self and to measure the distance between the mask of security, ease, confidence and assurance I wear (so easily that its features often lift into a smirk that looks like complacency and smugness) and the real condition of anxiety, self-doubt, self-disgust and fear in which much of my life then and now is lived. — Stephen Fry

Is it a wolf I hear,
Howling his lonely communion
With the unpiloted stars,
Or merely the self importance and servitude
In the bark of a dog?
How many millenia did it take,
Twisting and torturing
The pride from the one
To make a tool,
The other?
And how do we measure the distance from spirit to spirit?
And who do we find to blame? — Richard K. Morgan

Of course, physics prevents us from dividing things beyond a certain limit, determined by what is called the Planck constant. This is because, according to physicists, it is actually impossible to measure a distance smaller than 10-34m without creating a black hole that would swallow up the measuring device. — Marcus Du Sautoy

The distance we feel from our actions is proportionate to our ignorance of them; our ignorance, in turn, is largely a measure of the length of the chain of intermediaries between ourselves and our acts. — John Lachs

When the enemy comes with shame and blame, tell him to go measure the distance from east to west and get back to you. — Louie Giglio

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

The altar reminds us of the remoteness in which He lives "beyond the altar," as we might say, meaning divine distance; or "above the altar," meaning divine loftiness both to be understood of course not spatially, but spiritually. They mean that God is the Intangible One, far removed from all approaching, from all grasping; that He is the all-powerful, Majestic One immeasurably exalted above earthly things and earthly striving. Such breadth and height are founded not on measure, but on God's essence: His holiness, to which man of himself has no access. — Romano Guardini

He wanted to make cast models of her. He wanted to take a set of precision calipers and measure every distance between her features. He wanted her blood and glandular fluids analyzed by the finest chemists in the world - there must be something detectibly different in her inner workings for him to respond so dramatically, as if he'd been given a drug for which science had yet to find a name.
But more than anything, he wanted to - — Sherry Thomas

The desert. No seasons of bloom and decay. Just the endless turn of night and day. Out of time: and she is gazing- not over it, taken into it, for it has no measure of space, features that mark distance from here to there. In a film of haze there is no horizon, the pallor of sand, pink-traced, lilac-luminous with its own colour of faint light, has no demarcation from land to air. Sky-haze is indistinguishable from sand-haze. All drifts together, and there is no onlooker; the desert is eternity. — Nadine Gordimer

To whom one reports is a unit of measure. It measures the exact distance between the player and the center of power. It is the closest we can get to a calibrated answer to the question 'How big am I?' More than the size of an executive's office or even his title, which no one remembers anyway, the fewer people between the player and a 'yes,' the more powerful he is. — Lynda Obst

You've grown so tall, Mageling, in these four years," she said, as if she hadn't really looked at him for a while. "And handsome. Are you taller than your father was?"
"So I'm told. It's hard for me to remember now." That was a lie. He remembered - exactly - the measure of his father's arm around his shoulders, the distance between them when he leaned down to speak at Ash's level, even the scent of him - leather and sweat and fresh mountain air. — Cinda Williams Chima

In the morning was again distressed as soon as I waked, hearing much talk about the world and the things of it. I perceived the men were in some measure afraid of me; and I discoursed something about sanctifying the sabbath, if possible to solemnize their minds: but when they were at a little distance, they again talked freely about secular affairs. Oh, I thought what a hell it would be, to live with such men to eternity! — David Brainerd

Every mile marker can be met with some measure of trepidation, in a race or in life. Am I on target? Do I have what it takes to finish strong? Am I taking care to stay nourished so I can endure? Is my training proving to be sufficient? Am I prepared for the hills? It is impossible to fathom the full distance, so we make our way to the next mile marker, and the next, checking in with ourselves as we go. — Kristin Armstrong

She loved beyond measure, When I was young I thought her cold. But in time I came to understand that she was too tender for the world she'd been born into, I said. Sorrow gave Dalia an iron gift. Behind that hard shelter, she
loved boundlessly in the distance and privacy of her solitude, safe from
the tragic rains of her fate. — Susan Abulhawa

First of all, in any sport where you can measure distance, height speed and all of that, you see how athletes have changed their sport and made it better. I believe, with every generation, the sport has improved. Certainly, in the men's game, that has been the case. I think that I played Pete [Sampras] at his best, I played Roger [Federer] at his best.. I believe wholeheartedly that Roger and [Rafael] Nadal have pushed the game much further than myself or Pete ever did. Their options on the tennis court are considerably more than ours. — Andre Agassi

One's distance from Heaven is in proportion to the measure of one's self-love. — Emanuel Swedenborg

And now, I understand intimately how you don't realize what you have until you lose it. Maybe holding something precious at a distance is the only way to measure its value. The — Jodi Picoult

Raindrops beat against the glass, blurring street lights alongside the road that stretch off into the distance at identical intervals as if they'd been set down to measure the earth. A — Haruki Murakami

It is the curse of the genius that in the same measure in which others think him great and worthy of admiration, he thinks them small and miserable creatures. His whole life long he has to suppress this opinion; and, as a rule, they suppress theirs as well. Meanwhile, he is condemned to live in a bleak world, where he meets no equal, as it were an island where there are no inhabitants but monkeys and parrots. Moreover, he is always troubled by the illusion that from a distance a monkey looks like a man. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

We can never put enough distance between ourselves and what we love. To think that God is, is still to think of him as present; this is a thought according to our measure, destined only to console us. It is much more fitting to think that God is not, just as we must love him purely enough that we could be indifferent to the fact that he should not be. It is for this reason that the atheist is closer to God than the believer. — Maurice Blanchot

The measure of a person's disposition is this: how far is he from what he understands to what he does, how great is the distance between his understanding and his actions. — Soren Kierkegaard

Man's feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong. Then I went further: it was then that I called to you for the first time, and you would not come. — E. M. Forster

I build boxes
and place them at your feet,
to measure the distance
between dreams and reality. — Jessica Kristie

You can measure distance by time. 'How far away is it?' 'Oh about 20 minutes.' But it doesn't work the other way. 'When do you get off work?' 'Around 3 miles.' — Jerry Seinfeld

When you dance, you measure distance as if it's a solid thing; you make precise judgments every time two bodies exist in relation to each other. So I knew right away the definition of the space between us. — David Levithan

[F]or several thousand years we have been obsessed with a false humility - on the one hand, putting ourselves down as mere creatures" who came into this world by the whim of God or the fluke of blind forces, and on the other, conceiving ourselves as separate personal egos fighting to control the physical world. We have lacked the real humility of recognizing that we are members of the biosphere, the "harmony of contained conflicts" in which we cannot exist at all without the cooperation of plants, insects, fish, cattle, and bacteria. In the same measure, we have lacked the proper self-respect of recognizing that I, the individual organism, am a structure of such fabulous ingenuity that it calls the whole universe into being. In the act of putting everything at a distance so as to describe and control it, we have orphaned ourselves both from the surrounding world and from our own bodies - leaving "I" as a discontented and alienated spook, anxious, guilty, unrelated, and alone. — Alan W. Watts

The structural similarity of men, and their ability to be represented both as ideal, like Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, and as average. Man being the measure of all things, and therefore a sort of standard and interchangeable unit of length, breadth, intelligence, emotion. We could lay them end to end to measure the distance between the continents, the distance to the moon. We could use them to calculate the weight of weather, or to buy things at the grocery. With such an abundance of men, we could gauge anything we chose. — Alexandra Kleeman

You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. — Paulo Coelho

Who shows a child, just as they are? Who sets it
in its constellation, and gives the measure
of distance into its hand? Who makes a child's death
out of grey bread, that hardens, - or leaves it
inside its round mouth like the core
of a shining apple? Killers are
easy to grasp. But this: death,
the whole of death, before life,
to hold it so softly, and not live in anger,
cannot be expressed. — Rainer Maria Rilke

With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary - the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation. — Edwin Powell Hubble

Nothing makes time pass or shortens the way like a thought that absorbs in itself all the faculties of the one who is thinking. External existence is then like a sleep of which this thought is the dream. Under its influence, time has no more measure, space has no more distance. — Alexandre Dumas

He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. Not at the same time. Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage. A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we're defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you're not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I'm not interested in your feedback. — Brene Brown