Miles And Distance Quotes & Sayings

Most long-distance travel and commerce went by water, which explains why most cities were seaports - Cincinnati on the Ohio River and St. Louis on the Mississippi being notable exceptions. To transport a ton of goods by wagon to a port city from thirty miles inland typically cost nine dollars in 1815; for the same price the goods could be shipped three thousand miles across the ocean. — Daniel Walker Howe

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

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

The difference between America and England is that the English think 100 miles is a long distance and the Americans think 100 years is a long time. The difference between an autobiography and an unauthorized biography is like the difference between an account of your life written by your mother and one written by your mother-in-law. — Marilyn Vos Savant

There were no traces of human existence around them. Old ruts, overgrown with grass, made human presence seem more distant, adding the distance of years to the distance of miles. A haze of twilight remained over the ground, but in the breaks between the tree trunks there were leaves that hung in patches of shining green and seemed to light the forest. The leaves hung still. They walked, alone to move through a motionless world. She noticed suddenly that they had not said a word for a long time. — Ayn Rand

The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world. — John Muir

You have just dined," Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." The — Michael Pollan

On a clear night the naked eye can see about 4,500 stars, so the astronomers say. The telescope of even a small observatory makes nearly 2,000,000 stars visible, and a modern reflecting telescope brings the light from thousands of millions more to the viewer - specks of light in the Milky Way. But in the colossal dimensions of the cosmos our stellar system is only a tiny part of an incomparably larger stellar system - of a cluster of Milky Ways, one might say, containing some twenty galaxies within a radius of 1,500,000 light-years (1 light-year=the distance traveled by light in a year, i.e., 186,000 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 miles). And even this vast number of stars is small in comparison with the many thousands of spiral nebulae disclosed by the electronic telescope. Disclosed to the present day, I should emphasize, for research of this kind is only just beginning. — Erich Von Daniken

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. — Anonymous

The clouds won't shatter my dreams, but this is a story about how I lost myself to the storm."
"And something's got me tethered to you ... "
"Always to you ... "
"They think I'm crazy ... I love him. I swear, I do."
"Then why are you here, T?"
"Esto es complicado, Eli. It's all the lies I made up to get away from you, the distance I drove to free myself, that's brought me here. It's that moment before your kiss and the sound of my name on your lips. It's you that's taken me the five miles I needed to be where you are. I won't run again."
"What are we doing?"
"We're LIVING. — Nadege Richards

He lit his cigar and sat back at peace with the world; I, too, was at peace in another world than his. We both were happy. He talked of Julia and I heard his voice, unintelligible at a great distance, like a dog's barking miles away on a still night. — Evelyn Waugh

Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road, with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and there, in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded cypress, top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of form as the apple-trees in Japanese pictures - such was our course and the surroundings of it. — Mark Twain

I could not disagree more," said Ganesh, my father giving me a hidden wink. "If we build toward them they'll see it as hostile and we'll be pulled into a confrontation. Now, I agree that we've got to expand - these last few days in Bridewell have clearly shown that. Within a few years Bridewell and the towns against the sea will be at maximum capacity, and then what will we do? We have over ten miles between us and Ainsworth, which I think is a good healthy distance. We can't expand off the cliffs from Lathbury or Turlock, so those are dead ends. Bridewell is stuck in the middle with no place to grow. I think our best option is to start building two-and three-story buildings. Grow up instead of out. We could grow to twice our size if we just abolished the single-level rule. — Patrick Carman

It has been said there is nothing appertaining to life upon the broad plain. That is hardly true. Looking down from the Sierra Blanco, one sees a pathway traced out across the desert, which winds away and is lost in the extreme distance. It is rutted with wheels and trodden down by the feet of many adventurers. Here and there there are scattered white objects which glisten in the sun, and stand out against the dull deposit of alkali. Approach, and examine them! They are bones: some large and coarse, others smaller and more delicate. The former have belonged to oxen, and the latter to men. For fifteen hundred miles one may trace this ghastly caravan route by these scattered remains of those who had fallen by the wayside . — Arthur Conan Doyle

As the Siberian saying goes: One hundred versts (roughly a hundred miles) is no distance. A hundred rubles isn't worthwhile money. And a hundred grams of vodka just makes you thirsty. — Farley Mowat

There was only so much space between us, not even a real distance if measured in miles or feet or even inches, all the things that told you how far you'd come or had left to go. But it was a big space, if only for me. And as I moved forward to him covering it, he waited there on the other side. It was only the last little bit I has to go, but in the end, I knew it would be all I would truly remember. So as I kissed him, bringing this summer and everything else full circle, I let myself fall, and was not scared of the ground I knew would rise up to meet me. — Sarah Dessen

Bearing Two Nine Five distance six miles from ----- -----. Attack! Attack!" On the bridge of the Grayson we shook off an overpowering weariness and listened to the PT's as they tore in for the enemy to lash out with torpedoes ("pickles," in PT language). "----- ----- they're headed for you. Cut'em off - cut'em off." "They're headed for the ----- -----. Get in there! What the hell's the matter? " "O.K. - O.K. I've fired my pickles - we got him - I'm getting out of here." "All ----- Close in - Close in." Toward Savo there was a red glow - a sudden blinding flash of flame. ----- had caught a pickle. That was swell. The PT's were in there with everything they had. But their pickles were limited in number. Now the destroyers could go after the enemy with our own tin fish and comparatively heavy guns. Scotty Etheridge — Frederick J. Bell

I really beleive that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook wouls be fundamentally changed . The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy arguement suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white,not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied. — Michael Collins

The great commander, who seemed by expression of his visage to be always on the look-out for something in the extremest distance, and to have no ocular knowledge of anything within ten miles, made no reply whatever. — Charles Dickens

Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end,
Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone.
And I never see my old friends face,
For life is a swift and terrible race,
He knows I like him just as well,
As in the days when I rang his bell.
And he rang mine but we were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men.
Tired of playing a foolish game,
Tired of trying to make a name.
"Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim
Just to show that I'm thinking of him",
But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
And distance between us grows and grows.
Around the corner, yet miles away,
"Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today."
And that's what we get and deserve in the end.
Around the corner, a vanished friend. — Charles Hanson Towne

Ashley,
I caught a bear today in the new trap. We're taking it a hundred miles north. That's a hundred miles closer to where you are. I've decided units and measurements of distance are bullshit. With you there are only two distances that matter:
Here.
Not here.
You are not here.
- Drew — Penny Reid

I grew up in northern New Jersey - the banlieue of New York - and I now live in Brooklyn. I am separated from my parents by about 50 miles, but really there is almost no distance between us. I speak to them nearly every day. — Jonathan Ames

Distance never seperates two hearts that really care, for our memories span the miles and in seconds we are there. But whenever I start feeling sad cuz I miss you I remind myself how lucky I am to have someone so special to miss. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? "I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she said aloud. "I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think - " (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the school-room, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) " - yes, that's about the right distance - but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?" (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.) — Lewis Carroll

We're taking it a hundred miles north.
That's a hundred miles closer to where you are.
I've decided units and measurements of distance are bullshit.
With you there are only two distances that matter:
Here.
Not here.
You are not here. — Penny Reid

The way to get through anything mentally painful is to take it a little at a time. The mind can't handle dealing with a massive iceberg of pain in front of it, but it can deal with short nuggets that will come to an end. So instead of thinking, Ugh, I've got twenty-four miles to go, focus on making it to the next telephone pole in the distance. Whether you're running twenty or one hundred and twenty miles at a time, the distance has to be tackled mentally and physically one mile at a time. The ability to compartmentalize pain into these small bite sizes is key. — Joe De Sena

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

At least initially, the relationship took on a nineteenth-century epistolatory quality. The only way they could stay in touch was by letter. In 1991, while South Korea was becoming the world's largest exporter of mobile telephones, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call. But even writing a letter was not a simple undertaking. Writing paper was scarce. People would write in the margins of newspapers. The paper in the state stores was made of corn husk and would crumble easily if you scratched too hard. Mi-ran had to beg her mother for the money to buy a few sheets of imported paper. Rough drafts were out of the question; paper was too precious. The distance from Pyongyang to Chongjin was only 250 miles, but letters took up to a month to be delivered. — Barbara Demick

In Le Mans, despite increasingly cold days, Wilbur, having switched to wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, was busy practicing takeoffs without the use of a catapult. He had decided to compete for the Michelin Cup, a prize newly established by the French tire company, and in the competition such launching devices were not allowed. On the day of the event, December 31, the last day of the year and Wilbur's last big event at Camp d'Auvours, in spite of rain and cold he was barely able to endure, he put on his most astonishing performance yet, flying longer and farther than anyone ever had - 2 hours, 20 minutes, and 23 and one fifth seconds during which he covered a distance of 77 miles. He won the Cup. — David McCullough

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

let us start by picturing the Japan archipelago lying in the sea by the Chinese mainland. If its proximity allowed it to become part of the Sinosphere and acquire a written culture, its distance benefited the development of indigenous writing. The Dover Strait, separating England and France, is only 34 kilometers (21 miles) wide. A fine swimmer can swim across it. In contrast, the shortest distance between Japan and the Korean Peninsula is five or six times greater, and between Japan and the Chinese mainland, twenty-five times greater. The current, moreover, is deadly. . . . Japan's distance from China gave it political and cultural freedom and made possible the flowering of its own writing. — Minae Mizumura

Between the Mile

I have always counted the miles.
Sometimes they came quick,
Other times slow.
The distance between things,
The way I could know.
Close could feel far,
And far could feel near.
The miles that passed too quickly,
The ones I ran out of fear.
They weren't all the same,
So I had been told,
The unmarked trails,
And the days I was bold.

Some miles went down,
Spiraling so low,
When I was afraid to look forward,
There was nowhere to go.
The sunset came fast,
And the day turned to night,
But the trails could be endless,
If I looked at them right.

Everything I knew,
All I was told,
The conversations left behind,
The people who grew old.

When the miles stretched out before me,
I wanted to sew them at the seam,
Looking forward and then back,
Holding everything in between. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

What's at the core of your desire to run a marathon? Couple this journey with value beyond miles. The meaning you ascribe to your effort crystalizes your motivation and fuels your commitment to stay the course and go the distance. — Gina Greenlee

What manner of ship is this? What does it do? What is its combat record? Well, those are fair questions, if difficult ones. The Reluctant, as was said, is a naval auxiliary. It operates in the back areas of the Pacific. In its holds it carries food and trucks and dungarees and toothpaste and toilet paper. For the most part it remains on its regular run, from Tedium to Apathy and back; about five days each way. It makes an occasional trip to Monotony, and once it made a run all the way to Ennui, a distance of two thousand nautical miles from Tedium. It performs its dreary and unthanked job, and performs it, if not inspiredly, then at least adequately. — Thomas Heggen

But aren't all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos
we know what's out there. It's what isn't that truly compels us. Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet lags
four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon
but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant
sail for Asia and stumble on America
and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along. — Jess Walter

I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. 'I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think--' (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) '--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.) Presently she began again. 'I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad there — Lewis Carroll

O, the sorrow of us all,
to wander the earth in a shell.
And looking to the heavens,
we lay to rest in hell.
The suffering of the innocent
in the midst of Jacob's well.
How the miles fled between us,
and that distance is still great.
Though on the same shore we now sit,
in temporal quietude to wait.
The moon is our bright witness;
it will lead us to the gate. — Craig Froman

They were eye to eye now. He took a step closer and then just stood there, unable to move. He could not do this. The distance between them felt like nothing. It felt like miles. — Leigh Bardugo

There was no girls' cross-country team at our high school, since cross-country courses were two or three miles long, and, at that distance, a girl's uterus could fall out. — Gretchen Reynolds

It is always the same. Whether you are walking or going by train, the way always seems shorter the second time than the first. (And that is true of distances that are not to be measured in miles and yards.) — Erich Kastner

California and Italy are about the same size. Roughly speaking, California contains about 150,000 square miles, Italy about 120,000 square miles. They are not dissimilar in physical characteristics. They extend over a long distance from north to south, and each has an extensive coastline. Each is destitute of coal mines. Each produces large quantities of wheat. Each produces citrus and other fruits, olives, wine, and raisins. The climate is about the same, although California's is superior. They are in about the same zone. Rome lies in about the same latitude as San Francisco. Our state is one of the richest and most fertile of all the United States. Yet suppose that California were as populous as Italy - someday it will be. Suppose it had a population of millions. Could California, even with its vast resources, support an army of a quarter of a million men as Italy does? She could do it only as Italy does, by grinding the people into the dust with oppressive taxation. — Jerome Hart

Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet legs - four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon - but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. — Jess Walter

The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it "annihilates space." It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there. — C.S. Lewis

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

There is the distance of miles, and the distance of brothers, to overcome. He can feel the world coming between them again. But the world is so much smaller than it used to be. — David Levithan

If you are not a skater, you probably can't imagine what I mean. I could try to tell you by saying it's a feeling of ice miles running under your blades, the wind splitting open to let you through, the earth whirling around you.It's a sense of power, of command over distance and gravity, and an illusion of no longer having to move because movement is carrying you. — Sonja Henie

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

Miles watched the evening shadows flowing up along the backbone of the Dendarii range, high and massive in the distance. How small those mountains looked from space! Little wrinkles on the skin of a globe he could cover with his hand, all their crushing mass made invisible. Which was illusory, distance or nearness? Distance, Miles decided. Distance was a damned lie. Had his father known this? Miles suspected so. — Lois McMaster Bujold

This is the sad bed of chosen chastity because you are miles and mountains away. — Erica Jong

I wanted his hands at my back and his lips speaking poems on mine and our journey to each other to be completed, the miles between us consumed and all distance closed. — Ally Condie

Her death didn't feel real yet. Nona stood there, casting no shadow, and found she could feel nothing for her friend. Some emotions are like that, too big to be seen from within, like the ice patterns, written across empty miles, which make sense only from a great height. She slumped, staggering as weariness caught up with her. She would find that distance in time, and there would be sorrow enough to make the dead weep, and she feared it. — Mark Lawrence

I do a lot of biking. I need that mileage and the long-distance stuff because tennis demands it. My fitness trainer is always trying to convince me to do an Ironman. I can probably run the marathon, I can make the 112 miles on the bike, but I will never swim for 2.4 miles. I will die after 100 meters. — Tomas Berdych

You're my closest friend and you're thousands of miles away. — Anthony Horowitz

While wandering a deserted beach at dawn, stagnant in my work, I saw a man in the distance bending and throwing as he walked the endless stretch toward me. As he came near, I could see that he was throwing starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into the sea. When he was close enough I asked him why he was working so hard at this strange task. He said that the sun would dry the starfish and they would die. I said to him that I thought he was foolish. There were thousands of starfish on miles and miles of beach. One man alone could never make a difference. He smiled as he picked up the next starfish. Hurling it far into the sea he said, "It makes a difference for this one." I abandoned my writing and spent the morning throwing starfish. — Loren Eiseley

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

He had been aware of the distance traveled by his heart, similar to the way a hiker became lost in the wilderness. A half mile out and you could still see where you had started, could easily find the way back home. But ten miles and a number of forks in your trail later and there was no going back. At that point, you had no choice but to marshal the resources to build yourself a shelter and put down fresh roots. — J.R. Ward

My mind went back to that picture in the obstetrics book. A cow standing in the middle of a gleaming floor while a sleek veterinary surgeon in a spotless parturition overall inserted his arm to a polite distance. He was relaxed and smiling, the farmer and his helpers were smiling, even the cow was smiling. There was no dirt or blood or sweat anywhere.
That man in the picture had just finished an excellent lunch and had moved next door to do a bit of calving just for the sheer pleasure of it, as a kind of dessert. He hadn't crawled shivering from his bed at two o'clock in the morning and bumped over twelve miles of frozen snow, staring sleepily ahead till the lonely farm showed in the headlights. He hadn't climbed half a mile of white fell-side to the doorless barn where his patient lay. — James Herriot

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The wind then became calmed in some degree: when, after sun-rise, we perceived that the mountain we had seen was in the air, and that we could see light between it and the sea. I was much astonished at this: but, seeing the sailors in the utmost perturbation, and bidding farewell to one another, I said, Pray what is the matter? They said, What we supposed to be a mountain, is really a Rokh,1 and if he sees us, we shall assuredly perish, there being now between us and him a distance of ten miles only. But God, in his goodness, gave us a good wind, and we steered our course in a direction from him, so that we saw no more of him; nor had we any knowledge of the particulars of his shape. — Ibn Battuta

Chelnov directed Rubin's attention to the geography of Moses' crossing. From the Nile to Jerusalem the Jews had at most 250 miles to go, and that meant that even if they rested on the Sabbath they could have easily covered the distance in three weeks. Wasn't it necessary therefore to assume that for the remaining forty years Moses did not simply lead them but misled them all over the Arabian desert? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Our friendship had been a long-distance one since we went off to college. But I never met another woman who meant to me what she did. No one else could make me laugh like she could. So my oldest friend remained my best friend, despite however many miles kept us apart, and it was for that reason that I made her my maid of honor. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

My steamboat voyage to Albany and back, has turned out rather more favorable than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is one hundred and fifty miles; I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down in thirty. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by, the power of the steam engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. — Robert Fulton

I felt I was in the loneliest place in the world, and I was apprehensive. Nothing could be heard except the occasional crash of an unknown creature in the forest, and, once in awhile, a deep thrumming similar to the lowest barely audible sound of a string bass. I was standing alone in 1972 in a semi-ruined lighthouse that my wife, fifteen-year-old daughter, and I had just purchased. The lighthouse was located atop a 200-foot cliff on an island a dozen miles from the Lake Superior shoreline. I was separated from the nearest human being by an unknown but surely great distance, and had hiked several hours through the forest to reach the place, following the path of an old road that once led to the lighthouse but was now no longer passable with a vehicle. The low rumble I occasionally heard, straddling the lowest limit of my auditory range, was caused by an occasional large wave entering a cavern below the lighthouse and resonating in the stony echo chamber. — Loren Graham

Some miles to the North, a ring of mountains rose out of the clouds. The peaks were clad in snow and ice, and together they looked like an ancient, jagged crown resting atop the layers of mist. The eastward-facing scarps shone brilliantly in the light of the morning sun, while long blue shadows cloaked the western sides and stretched dwindling into the distance, tenebrous daggers upon the billowy, snow-white plain. — Christopher Paolini

Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

And as short as two miles had come to seem to him over the course of his running career, it occurred to him now that two miles was an insurmountable distance to an infant, or a legless man, or a human cadaver for that matter. Einstein was right, he decided. It is all relative. — John L. Parker Jr.

He liked to talk about the anatomy of racecars, motorcycles, hunting rifles, how things work, and she liked to listen. It was a mark of the distance between them that she listened so eagerly, the perennial miles, the weeks and months — Don DeLillo

Sometimes you can hear the wire, hear it reaching out across the miles; whining with its own weight, crying from the cold, panting at the distance, humming with the phantom sounds of someone else's conversation. You cannot always hear it - only sometimes; when the night is deep and the room is dark and the sound of the phone's ringing has come slicing through uneasy sleep. — David Bradley

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

Everyone else not real-very distant, small figures. I would have to swim a thousand miles to reach the margin of the relationship, on the other side of which might lie other people, and it was too far, I was too tired.
The almost infinitely extending network of that relationship; its dense weave That's what held me- — Susan Sontag

The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence. — H.G.Wells

Speedwork is terribly overrated! I remember talking to runners after distance races and someone is sure to say they were able to run fast off base work with no speed work at all. The truth is speedwork doesn't work. Lots of miles, and then fast miles gets you there much quicker than speed work. — Gerry Lindgren

In her previous novels, Maggie O'Farrell has often measured the distance between intimates and the unexpected intimacy of distance - geographic, temporal, cultural. In 'The Hand That First Held Mine' and 'The Distance Between Us,' characters separated by many miles or many years turn out to be joined in ways they never anticipated. — Stacey D'Erasmo

From The Self-Mover's Bible; The Longest Distance between Two Points is a Shortcut

Most of us look at a map and instinctively plot a trip based on the shortest distance or as the crow flies. The difference here is that you aren't flying a crow you're driving a truck. Unless you are personally familiar with the alternative route your quickest and safest route is the Interstate. 500 miles of smooth sailing on a six-lane highway takes less time to drive than 400 miles on winding two-lane country roads. The Interstate was made for trucks. — Jerry G. West

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

How far did they fly? Five and a half thousand as the crow. Or: from Indianness to Englishness, an immeasurable distance. Or, not
very far at all, because they rose from one great city, fell to another. The distance between cities is always small; a villager, travelling a
hundred miles to town, traverses emptier, darker, more terrifying space. — Salman Rushdie